Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / iii / Paper 218 / 2 / b / Solution

Choose $\lambda$ to minimize an estimate of out-of-sample mean squared prediction error, commonly K-fold cross-validation or a separate validation set. As $\lambda$ increases, the coefficient vector is shrunk toward zero. This generally increases bias of an estimator but decreases variance of an estimator; the minimizing value balances the two contributions in the bias-variance tradeoff. The independent test set in the question can assess the final choice, but repeatedly selecting $\lambda$ on that same set would cause data leakage.