Cross-validation Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Cross-validation estimates predictive performance by repeatedly fitting on one part of the data and evaluating on held-out observations. In K-fold cross-validation, divide training data into disjoint folds ; identifies observation 's fold, and is fitted without fold . The displayed average scores each observation using a rule that did not train on it. Weight by observation count when fold sizes differ. Leave-one-out cross-validation uses one observation per fold. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ISLR2/Slides/Ch5_Resampling_Methods.pdf. ISLR chapter 5 slides, resampling methods
For the training error example, three folds contain indices with equal remainder modulo 3. Each fit uses eight observations. The squared-error loss averages for degrees 1, 2, and 7 are , , and respectively. Select degree 2 and refit on all twelve training data observations. The folds reuse scarce data while challenging each candidate to predict unseen responses; they do not touch the final test set.
Any learned preprocessing, including variable selection, must also be fitted within each training fold to avoid data leakage. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ISLR2/Slides/Ch5_Resampling_Methods.pdf. ISLR chapter 5 slides, the wrong and right way
Repeated tuning can itself overfit the cross-validation score; nested cross-validation uses inner folds for model selection and outer folds for assessment of that entire procedure. [ref]Folds use fewer training observations than the final refit, and their scores are dependent because training observations overlap. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ISLR2/Slides/Ch5_Resampling_Methods.pdf. ISLR chapter 5 slides, correlated fold estimates
Splitting must match deployment: for time series forecasting, rolling-origin cross-validation trains on the past and evaluates later observations, preventing future information from entering a forecast. Ordinary random folds need not answer that forecasting question. [ref] Kullback-Leibler divergence Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Kullback-Leibler divergence, also called relative entropy, compares two probability distributions in a specified order. In , observations follow and the comparison probability distribution is : the first argument supplies the averaging weights. For probability mass functions on a finite alphabet,Here is a random variable with probability distribution . For probability density functions relative to the same measure , replace the sum by . These formulas use natural logarithms unless stated otherwise. The expected value is under , even though appears in the denominator. [ref]
Take and on two outcomes. Direct calculation givesThe second outcome contributes negatively to the first sum: assigning it more probability than does makes its individual contribution negative. Nevertheless, relative entropy nonnegativity guarantees a nonnegative total. Reversing the arguments changes both the likelihood ratio and the averaging probabilities; taking an absolute value inside the logarithm would define a different quantity.
The units depend on the logarithm: natural logarithms give nats, whereas base-two logarithms give bits. Divide a value in nats by to obtain bits; the forward example is approximately bits. Changing the base rescales every Kullback-Leibler divergence by the same positive factor. Since the two calculated directions differ, Kullback-Leibler divergence is asymmetric and cannot be a metric. It also need not satisfy the triangle inequality. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/~kedart/ee376a_winter1617/Lecture_3.pdf. Tse, relative entropy, 2017, Section 3.3
The operational meaning is an expected penalty for using the wrong probability distribution. A prediction incurs log-loss when outcome occurs, the negative of the logarithmic scoring rule. Under , its expected value is the cross-entropy . Predicting with itself incurs information entropy , soThus Kullback-Leibler divergence is exactly excess expected log-loss, whenever these separate quantities are finite. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee276/files/previous_notes/lecture_2.pdf. Weissman, information measures, 2024, property 3
For lossless source coding, ideal codeword lengths similarly give excess expected length in bits per symbol. Actual prefix codes require integer codeword lengths; Shannon's source coding theorem explains how long blocks approach ideal per-symbol lengths. The interpretation concerns an average, not a fractional physical bit attached to every outcome. In our example, ideal coding with costs one bit per symbol, while bits; the difference is exactly the computed bits. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/~kedart/ee376a_winter1617/Lecture_3.pdf. Tse, information theory, 2017, Section 3.4
Zeros require explicit conventions. An outcome with contributes zero, including when ; the convention agrees with the relevant limit. If but , the Kullback-Leibler divergence is infinite: the predictor has declared impossible an outcome that can occur. On a finite alphabet, the probability support of must therefore be contained in the probability support of for a finite answer. For example, and give , but . For general probability measures, failure of absolute continuity of measures likewise gives infinity. Even does not guarantee a finite integral. [ref]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.2459. van Erven and Harremoës, Rényi Divergence and Kullback-Leibler Divergence, 2014, Section II
To see how confidently wrong predictions are punished, hold the true Bernoulli distribution parameter at and vary the predicted parameter . Its binary relative entropy isIt vanishes at , equals approximately nats at , and equals nats at . Both endpoints give infinity because both outcomes remain possible under . Predicting almost no successes is especially costly because successes actually occur three quarters of the time. The reversed binary relative entropy stays finite at the endpoints: its averaging probability distribution concentrates on just one outcome, and assigns positive probability to both.
For model selection, minimizing expected log-loss ranks candidate statistical models by , since is common to them. The true probability distribution is usually unknown, so one estimates predictive performance using fresh observations or cross-validation. Fitting and assessing on the same data can reward overfitting; a small fitted Kullback-Leibler divergence alone does not establish useful prediction.
In variational inference, a tractable trial probability distribution commonly minimizes against a target posterior distribution . Maximizing the evidence lower bound accomplishes this without evaluating the target's normalization constant. The averaging now follows : placing trial probability where the posterior distribution assigns almost none is strongly penalized. The chosen direction and trial family therefore matter. [ref]
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~blei/papers/BleiKucukelbirMcAuliffe2017.pdf. Blei, Kucukelbir and McAuliffe, Variational Inference: A Review for Statisticians, 2017, Section 2.2
These comparisons do not by themselves establish causal inference. Two statistical models can reproduce the same observed probability distribution while predicting different responses to an intervention. Choosing the smaller Kullback-Leibler divergence therefore needs additional assumptions or experimental evidence before supporting a causal claim. [ref]
https://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r350.pdf. Pearl, Causal inference in statistics: An overview, 2009, Section 2
The original reference is S. Kullback and R. A. Leibler's 1951 paper [ref]
https://doi.org/10.1214/aoms/1177729694. On Information and Sufficiency
, published in The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 22(1), pages 79–86. Its title connects this comparison with sufficient statistics: the historical setting was statistical information, before today's widespread applications in prediction and variational inference. Nested cross-validation 2026-10-14
Nested cross-validation separates selection from assessment using two levels of held-out data. Within each outer training fold, inner cross-validation chooses a model or tuning parameters; the complete selected fitting procedure is then applied to that outer training fold and scored on its untouched outer evaluation fold. This estimates the performance of the model selection procedure, including its choices, rather than reusing its best inner score as an assessment. A final model can then be selected and fitted using all available training data. [ref]
https://jmlr.org/papers/v11/cawley10a.html. Cawley and Talbot, selection bias and performance evaluation
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 36 2 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The family-history table contains men, of whom have the response present, giving an overall observed fraction . The unadjusted fractions are with a positive family history and without one. Their crude odds ratio is ; this is not the covariate-adjusted effect from the fitted logistic regression.
The full model has an intercept and nine slopes, hence residual degrees of freedom. The binomial distribution dispersion is fixed at one. Although the software labels coefficient-to-standard-error ratios as t values, here they are asymptotic normal Wald statistics, not statistics with an estimated Gaussian residual variance and an exact Student reference. The full conditional coefficients provide evidence for tobacco, cholesterol, family history, behaviour score and age: their absolute Wald ratios are approximately . The other four ratios are smaller in magnitude, especially alcohol at about . These are conditional associations; a weak adjusted coefficient does not by itself establish absence of an underlying association, and multicollinearity can affect the estimates.
The null deviance is on degrees of freedom and the full residual deviance is on . Their difference has a nominal nine-degree-of-freedom likelihood-ratio test reference for the nine slopes jointly. The absolute residual deviance should not automatically be compared with for the reasons in part (i).
The shown stepwise selection by the Akaike information criterion follows a backward path. For individual binary observations the saturated log-likelihood is zero, sowhere includes the intercept. Removing a one-parameter term improves AIC exactly when the increased deviance is less than two. The successive deletions are alcohol, adiposity, blood pressure and obesity. The corresponding values areAt the final step, every remaining single-term deletion increases AIC. This is a local stopping condition of the search, not a proof that it found the best subset among all possible models. Obesity is retained for several steps because its successive deletion costs differ after the other terms are removed; the procedure does not simply sort the initial Wald ratios.
For the selected fit, write for positive family history and otherwise. The fitted linear predictor isHolding the other predictors fixed, a unit increase multiplies the odds by . In the same variable order, the unit odds ratios areA ten-year age difference multiplies the fitted odds by , and ten behaviour-score points by . Family history has adjusted odds ratio about , with ordinary fitted-model confidence interval . The intercept is the log odds at zero numerical covariates and absent family history; that extrapolated baseline is not a typical man's risk. Odds ratios are not risk ratios.
The selected model's residual degrees of freedom are , consistent with its six coefficients. All five retained slopes have nominal normal-Wald values below in that model, but these tests and confidence intervals do not incorporate the prior model selection. Its improvement over the intercept-only fit is on five nominal degrees of freedom; it loses only deviance units relative to the nine-slope fit while using four fewer parameters. Selection optimism remains relevant to predictive performance. Check possible nonlinear continuous-predictor effects, influential observations and clinically motivated interactions; assess out-of-sample discrimination and agreement of predicted probabilities with observed frequencies by cross-validation or external data. The printed output alone does not supply those diagnostics, and the selected high-risk male population limits extrapolation to other populations. Nothing here establishes causal effects of these observational predictors.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 38 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let be the flight distance in millimetres for paper level , launch-angle level , design level and replicate , where and . The full factorial design is fitted by the normal linear modelThe assumptions are independent errors with a common variance and normal distribution, and the displayed factor-combination mean structure. The corner-point constraints areand whenever at least one index equals . Thus the eight free mean coefficients are . These treatment coding coefficients are comparisons at the other factors' reference levels, rather than necessarily averaged main effects.
To test the three-factor interaction term, compare the full model with the model retaining all main effects and all two-factor interactions. The null hypothesis is , against a nonzero value. Removing it increases the residual sum of squares by and removes one parameter. With eight residual degrees of freedom, the nested-model F-test givesThere is no evidence that this three-factor interaction is needed. This does not establish that all two-factor interactions vanish: the paper-design interaction is substantial.
The
stepAIC command performs stepwise selection by the Akaike information criterion. Its upper scope is the full factorial model and its lower scope is the intercept-only model. Starting from the full model, it compares admissible additions and deletions, preserving the hierarchy of interaction terms, and chooses changes that reduce the Akaike information criterion. With the supplied scope its default search permits both directions. For these Gaussian fits the displayed criterion, up to constants common to all models, is , where counts mean coefficients. The first deletion changes it from to : the small increase in residual sum of squares is outweighed by removing a parameter. This is a greedy model selection procedure, not an exhaustive search or a sequence of fixed-level hypothesis tests. The command's arguments are described in the MASS documentation.For the selected model, let and . Thenindependently between flights. It has no angle term. The maximum-likelihood estimates of its mean coefficients are also obtained by ordinary least squares:For example, the four fitted means are just the four paper-design cell means, each averaging four flights over the angle levels. With , the variance-covariance matrix of the coefficient estimates is . Its diagonal gives the displayed standard errors; their ratios are , with mm.
The final line of
summary(model2.lm) is the joint nested-model F-test of , comparing this four-parameter model with a common mean. Its statistic iswith F-distribution under the fixed-model null and P-value . Thus the selected paper-design terms jointly improve the fit substantially. The coefficient of determination means they account for about of the observed centred variation. These nominal inferential summaries do not adjust for the preceding model selection on the same data.Using the unrounded fitted means givesin millimetres. Hence choose the high-performance design with the lighter paper; the fitted model leaves both launch angles tied, with expected distance about mm. A preference for one angle is not supported by this selected model. The strong paper-design interaction reverses the design comparison: the simple design is better on heavy paper, whereas the high-performance design is better on light paper. Consequently a single design effect averaged over paper types would conceal the main result. There is little evidence here for an angle effect, and considerable flight-to-flight variability remains.
Before fitting, inspect raw-distance dot plots for all eight factor combinations, and interaction plots of cell means against design, with separate lines for paper and panels for angle. With only two replicates per cell, showing individual observations is more informative than elaborate box plots. These reveal reversals, spread and possible unusual flights. Afterwards inspect a residual-versus-fitted plot, a Q-Q plot of residuals, a scale-location plot, residuals against each factor and, if recorded, flight order, and Cook's distance for influential observations. Residual patterns by angle would question its deletion, while unequal spread or departures from the normal distribution would question the error assumptions rather than merely demand another mean term.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 30 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Represent the subset model by a set of column indices and let contain those columns. Its ordinary least squares estimator sets the omitted coefficients to zero and hasFor , use . Full column rank of implies full column rank for each . The matrix is an orthogonal projection matrix of rank .
Put and . Projection orthogonality gives the bias-variance decomposition of mean squared errorwhile the expected residual sum of squares isThese equations distinguish the mean-vector prediction risk in this problem from the additional noise in predicting a new response vector.
First take . Let project onto the full column space of . Since the full model contains , the residual estimate of Gaussian noise varianceis unbiased: its numerator has expectation . Consequently an unbiased Gaussian projection risk estimate isIndeed its expectation is for every , even when the subset model omits true effects. Independence of the two terms is not needed for this expectation calculation. The full-model variance estimate is important: the subset residual variance generally includes omitted-variable bias.
For a finite candidate collection, choose a model minimizing , breaking ties in favour of a smaller model. The term is common to all models, so this amounts to minimizingthe Mallows Cp form. The fit improvement competes with an increasing dimension penalty. Unbiasedness holds for each fixed model; the estimate at the data-selected model need not remain unbiased, because selection favours downward fluctuations. The method is a heuristic model selection rule, rather than an assertion that it finds the true model with certainty.
The printed includes a genuine qualification. If , there are no full-model residual degrees of freedom. Except in the balanced case , no integrable data-only unbiased estimator can satisfy the requested identity for all means and unknown variances. Here is a proof of the unknown-variance risk estimation in a saturated Gaussian model obstruction. Since is invertible, ranges over all . Suppose had the required expectation at every and variance . For , let and let . Marginally . Applying the assumed identity conditionally giveswhereas applying it to the marginal distribution gives . Their difference is , which must vanish. Integrability under the marginal Gaussian justifies conditioning. If , the obstruction disappears and the residual sum of squares alone has expectation . ThusThe general construction therefore requires , or an independently available unbiased variance estimate.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 218 2 b Solution 2026-10-03
Both criteria are used for model selection. AIC estimates relative out-of-sample predictive or Kullback-Leibler risk and is attractive when prediction is the main aim. BIC approximates a log Bayes factor under regular fixed-dimensional models and is consistent for selecting a true finite-dimensional model when one is present. Their penalties differ by versus . For , BIC penalizes each additional parameter more strongly and therefore tends to select smaller models.
Ridge regression Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Ridge regression fits a linear regression model while penalizing the size of its slope regression coefficients. For a fixed design matrix containing the slope predictors, observed responses , and an unpenalized regression intercept , the objective isHere is the all-ones vector, and is the squared Euclidean norm of the slopes alone. The first term is the residual sum of squares; the second implements regularization. No random-error assumption is needed to define this fit. The convention is a summed squared-error loss: writing the objective as gives the same fit when .[ref]
Modern regression 1: Ridge regression. slides 5 and 7: summed squared-error objective and unpenalized intercept
For an exact example, reuse the constructed pairs from linear regression. Their sample means are and , and the centered cross-products are and . ThusThe ordinary least squares line has slope and residual sum of squares . At , ridge regression has slope , regression intercept , and residual sum of squares ; at these become , , and . Every line passes through : the penalty reduces the slope while retaining the response sample mean.
The computational benefit is visible after predictor centering. Write for the design matrix with each column's sample mean subtracted, and . The unpenalized intercept in ridge regression gives , and the closed-form ridge regression estimator solvesFor any nonzero vector and , . This positive-definite matrix is therefore invertible even when lacks full column rank, including repeated columns or . The unique penalized slopes resolve the ambiguity of rank-deficient ordinary least squares; they do not supply evidence about slope directions absent from the data. This makes ridge regression useful for multicollinearity.[ref]
High-Dimensional Regression: Ridge. p. 1, equations (1)–(2): uniqueness for positive penalty regardless of design rank
Predictor centering and scaling serve different purposes. Centering handles the free regression intercept. Scaling determines what counts as a large slope: replacing by changes its coefficient to for the same predictions, changing its contribution to an unweighted penalty. A common convention forms standard scores using each nonconstant predictor's sample standard deviation , then penalizes slopes in those coordinates. Since , this is the weighted penalty in the original units. Constant columns have and must be removed before this scaling. Scaling is a modelling choice; equal penalties in original units and in standardized units define different fits.[ref]
Modern regression 1: Ridge regression. slide 7: center predictors, leave the intercept free and scale predictors to sample variance one
The singular value decomposition explains the shrinkage. If is the compact decomposition using the positive singular values , with columns of , thenThe principal-component shrinkage by ridge regression factors are between and : directions with small singular values are damped most. As , the fitted values approach ; the vanishing-penalty ridge limit recovers the ordinary least squares fitted vector as , even if the slope estimates at zero penalty are nonunique. The covariance and bias of a ridge regression estimator describes the resulting bias-variance tradeoff. A penalty can reduce variance of an estimator while introducing bias of an estimator; the unbounded directional risk of fixed ridge shrinkage rules out a uniform improvement for a fixed positive penalty over all possible signals.[ref]
For a second exact construction, choose a centered orthonormal set of three vectors,and set and . The squared singular values are and . At , the fitted coordinates along are , retaining and of their ordinary least squares values . At they become , retaining and . The unfittable component contributes to every residual sum of squares, giving total values , , and at penalties . These are constructed fits, not measured prediction results.
Exact synthetic ridge shrinkage retains the strong singular direction longer than the weak one
. Details. The penalty is a hyperparameter, so fitting slopes at a fixed value and selecting that value are separate tasks. Use a validation set or K-fold cross-validation to compare candidate penalties by held-out squared-error loss. In each split, compute predictor sample means and scales from that split's training data, apply the same transformation to its validation set, and refit the slopes; using held-out information in preprocessing introduces data leakage. Minimum training residual sum of squares cannot select useful shrinkage: ordinary least squares already attains the smallest possible value.[ref]
Model selection and validation 1: Cross-validation. slides 5–8 and 11–14: tuning for prediction, training error and refitting on each training fold
After model selection, refit on all training data with the selected penalty. A separate test set or nested cross-validation assesses the entire selection procedure; a low selected validation score alone is no performance guarantee.[ref]On Over-fitting in Model Selection and Subsequent Selection Bias in Performance Evaluation by Gavin C. Cawley and others. pp. 2079–2080: selection as part of fitting and nested assessment
Statistical learning Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Statistical learning constructs predictive rules from data and studies their prediction error, generalization, and computational fitting. In supervised learning, training data contain inputs and a response variable : regression analysis predicts a numerical response, while classification in statistical learning predicts a label. Unsupervised learning instead seeks structure without supplied responses, as in cluster analysis and principal component analysis. These tasks connect learning to probability and mathematical optimization. [ref]
https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ISLR2/Slides/Ch2_Statistical_Learning.pdf. James, Witten, Hastie and Tibshirani, ISLR chapter 2 slides
For a fitted rule and loss function , the predictive goal iswhere is a fresh observation, independent of the training data , from the intended target probability distribution. This prediction error fixes the fitted rule and averages over future observations; averaging again over training data gives the learning procedure's average performance. Its practical beauty is that a rule compresses past observations into useful future predictions. Its central difficulty is that excellent training error need not imply good generalization: cross-validation supports model selection, and a reserved test set assesses the resulting choice.
Stepwise selection by the Akaike information criterion Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-20
Starting from a fitted model, compare admissible single-term additions and deletions within specified lower and upper scopes, retaining hierarchical lower-order terms when an interaction requires them. Select a change reducing the Akaike information criterion and repeat until no admissible change improves it. For a Gaussian normal linear model with observations and fitted mean coefficients, the criterion used by R's linear-model stepwise search is , up to constants common to the models. The search is greedy and need not find the best model in the whole scope. Ordinary coefficient tests in the selected model do not account for this model selection. The software arguments are documented in the MASS documentation.
Test set Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-14
A test set is held out from both parameter fitting and model selection and is used to estimate the final selected procedure's prediction error. A validation set influences the choice; a test set assesses that choice after it is fixed. The distinction concerns how observations are used, not their file names.
For a fixed rule and an independent test set of size from the target probability distribution,This test error is an estimate, with sampling uncertainty; it is not a guarantee for each future prediction. Dataset shift changes what performance the estimate represents.
In the overfitting example, all degree choices are fixed in advance, cross-validation uses only training data, and the selected degree is locked before evaluating 400 separate points. Displaying the other curves afterward explains their behavior; it does not authorize selecting by those scores. Repeatedly inspecting a test set and changing the model makes it part of model selection, introducing data leakage and potentially optimistic assessment. [ref]
https://jmlr.org/papers/v11/cawley10a.html. Cawley and Talbot, over-fitting in model selection, 2010



