What is inductive bias in machine learning?

machine-learning terminology
haguki-taro picture haguki-taro · Feb 26, 2016 · Viewed 26.7k times · Source

What is inductive bias in machine learning? Why is it necessary?

Answer

Viswa picture Viswa · Feb 26, 2016

Every machine learning algorithm with any ability to generalize beyond the training data that it sees has some type of inductive bias, which are the assumptions made by the model to learn the target function and to generalize beyond training data.

For example, in linear regression, the model assumes that the output or dependent variable is related to independent variable linearly (in the weights). This is an inductive bias of the model.

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