Overfitting occurs when a machine learning model learns to perform exceptionally well on the training data but fails to generalize to unseen test data. Essentially, it becomes too specialized in capturing noise or idiosyncrasies in the training set, rather than learning the underlying patterns that apply more broadly.
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Complex Models and Flexibility: As you mentioned, flexible models (like neural networks) can easily overfit. They have the capacity to fit intricate relationships, but this can lead to memorizing noise rather than learning meaningful features.
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Bias-Variance Tradeoff: Finding the right balance between bias (underfitting) and variance (overfitting) is crucial. High bias means the model oversimplifies, while high variance means it’s too sensitive to fluctuations in the training data.
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Regularization Techniques: To combat overfitting, regularization techniques are employed. These include L1 (Lasso) and L2 (Ridge) regularization, dropout layers in neural networks, and early stopping during training.
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Cross-Validation: Splitting data into training and validation sets helps evaluate model performance. Cross-validation techniques (like k-fold cross-validation) provide a more robust estimate of generalization.
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Ensemble Methods: Combining multiple models (e.g., bagging, boosting, or stacking) can reduce overfitting. Ensemble methods leverage diverse models to improve overall performance.