What is the difference between classification and prediction?

machine-learning classification prediction definition
James picture James · Apr 15, 2015 · Viewed 31.2k times · Source

What is the difference between classification and prediction in machine learning?

Answer

Has QUIT--Anony-Mousse picture Has QUIT--Anony-Mousse · Apr 15, 2015

Classification is the prediction of a categorial variable within a predefined vocabulary based on training examples.

The prediction of numerical (continuous) variables is called regression.

In summary, classification is one kind of prediction, but there are others. Hence, prediction is a more general problem.

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