# Overfitting and Regularization

2019/04/25

## Overfitting

The learned model works well for training data but terrible for testing data (unknown data). In other words, the model has little training error but has huge perdition error.

When overfitting occurs, we get an over complex model with too many features. One way to avoid it is to apply Regularization and then we can get a better model with proper features.

## Regularization

It’s a technique applied to Cost Function $J(\theta)$ in order to avoid Overfitting.

The core idea in Regularization is to keep more important features and ignore unimportant ones. The importance of feature is measured by the value of its parameter $\theta_{j}$.

In linear regression, we modify its cost function by adding regularization term. The value of $\theta_{j}$ is controlled by regularization parameter $\lambda$. Note that $m$ is the number of data and $n$ is the number of features (parameters).

For instance, if we want to get a better model instead of the overfitting one. Obviously, we don’t need features $x^3$ and $x^4$ since they are unimportant. The procedure describes below.

First, we modify the Cost Function $J(\theta)$ by adding regularization. Second, apply gradient descent in order to minimize $J(\theta)$ and get the values of $\theta_3$ and $\theta_4$. After the minimize procedure, the values of $\theta_3$ and $\theta_4$ must be near to zero if $\lambda=1000$.

Remember, the value of $J(\theta)$ represents training error and this value must be positive ($\ge 0$). The parameter $\lambda=1000$ has significant effect on $J(\theta)$, therefore, $\theta_3$ and $\theta_4$ must be near to zero (e.g 0.000001) so as to eliminate error value.

## Regularization Parameter $\lambda$

• If $\lambda$ is too large, then all the values of $\theta$ may be near to zero and this may cause Underfitting. In other words, this model has both large training error and large prediction error. (Note that the regularization term starts from $\theta_1$)

• If $\lambda$ is zero or too small, its effect on parameters $\theta$ is little. This may cause Overfitting.

To sum up, there are two advantages of using regularization.

• The prediction error of the regularized model is lesser, that is, it works well in testing data (green points).

• The regularization model is simpler since it has less features (parameters).

So far, we have discussed the concept of regularization. Next, we will show how to minimize regularized cost function by using gradient descent.

## Regularized linear regression

$h_{\theta}(x)=\theta^{T} x=\theta_{0} x_{0}+\theta_{1} x_{1}+\theta_{2} x_{2}+\cdots+\theta_{n} x_{n}$, $x_{0}=1$

## Regularized logistic regression

$h_{\theta}\left(x^{(i)}\right)=\frac{1}{1+e^{-\theta^{T} x^{(i)}}}$