Bias Variance Trade Off
Bias Variance Trade Off
Bias Variance Trade Off
Sources of Error
• Sources of error in supervised learning models
• Bias – assumptions can prevent us from learning
relationships between features and output
• Variance – sensitivity to intricate details of training
set can lead to modeling noise in the data
• Irreducible Error – noise in the problem itself
• Bias-Variance trade-off: It is difficult to avoid
the first two types of error simultaneously
Bias-Variance trade-off
Example 1
LEFT RIGHT
Black: Truth RED: Test MSE
Orange: Linear Estimate Grey: Training MSE
Blue: smoothing spline Dashed: Minimum possible test
Green: smoothing spline (more MSE (irreducible error)
flexible)
Examples with Different Levels of Flexibility:
Example 2
LEFT RIGHT
Black: Truth RED: Test MSE
Orange: Linear Estimate Grey: Training MSE
Blue: smoothing spline Dashed: Minimum possible test
Green: smoothing spline (more MSE (irreducible error)
flexible)
Examples with Different Levels of
Flexibility: Example 3
LEFT RIGHT
Black: Truth RED: Test MES
Orange: Linear Estimate Grey: Training MSE
Blue: smoothing spline Dashed: Minimum possible test
Green: smoothing spline (more MSE (irreducible error)
flexible)
Test MSE, Bias and Variance
Test MSE
Bias
Variance
A Fundamental Picture