Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 205 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Use the unscaled penalty convention consistent with the displayed bound:For an objective with averaged squared loss, the corresponding penalty parameter would be . We retain the unscaled throughout.
By the representer theorem, the kernel ridge regression minimizer lies in the span of . A valid coefficient vector is , givingThe kernel matrix is a positive semidefinite matrix, so the inverse exists even if is singular. In the coefficient objective , this choice satisfies ; there is no need to cancel . The function itself is unique because of the strictly convex squared Hilbert norm. The matrix is the kernel-ridge hat matrix in the present normalization.
Let . Since , the zero mean and covariance assumption give the exact bias-variance decomposition for linear predictionNo normality of the noise is required for this identity.
Choose an orthonormal eigenbasis of , with eigenvalues . Its shrinkage factors are , soThe first bound follows from and from each shrinkage factor being at most one.
To control the bias by the Reproducing-kernel Hilbert space norm, for defineThe reproducing property gives andIf , the corresponding unscaled kernel combination has Hilbert norm squared , so . There is therefore no bias component in a zero-eigenvalue direction. For the remaining directions,The scalar bound is again , and the final step is Bessel inequality. Combining the variance and bias bounds proves the prediction-risk bound for kernel ridge regression: