Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 4 30J i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
The empirical risk isFor ,so is a convex function. Each signed margin is an affine function of , and composition with an affine function preserves convexity. Equivalently,is a positive semidefinite matrix. Therefore is convex.
Training error Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Training error is the average loss function evaluated on the observations used to fit the prediction rule. It is the empirical risk of the fitted rule on its own training data. With squared-error loss, it is the average squared regression residual, measuring fit to observed responses rather than performance on fresh responses. Flexible fitting usually makes it optimistically biased for prediction error, as quantified by prediction optimism.
For a reproducible polynomial regression example, take , , and the known noiseless target . Construct responses with fixed disturbancesOrdinary least squares over polynomials of polynomial degree at most 1, 2, and 7 gives training errors , , and . The monotone improvement follows because these candidate families are nested: every smaller-degree fit remains available in the larger family. This argument concerns minimum training error, not generalization, and assumes the fitting mathematical optimization is solved. Degrees 2 and 7 fitted instead to the exact noiseless responses have mathematically zero training error; the script obtains approximately and from rounding. Extra flexibility alone does not force overfitting.