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Learning Curves in Machine Learning

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Encyclopedia of Machine Learning

Synonyms

Error curve; Experience curve; Improvement curve; Training curve

Definition

A learning curve shows a measure of predictive performance on a given domain as a function of some measure of varying amounts of learning effort. The most common form of learning curves in the general field of machine learning shows predictive accuracy on the test examples as a function of the number of training examples as in Fig. 1.

Learning Curves in Machine Learning. Figure 1
figure 1_452 figure 1_452

Stylized learning curve showing the model accuracy on test examples as a function of the number of training examples

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Recommended Reading

  • Cortes, C., Jackel, L. D., Solla, S. A., Vapnik, V., & Denker, J. S. (1994). Learning curves: Asymptotic values and rate of convergence. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 6, 327–334.

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Authors and Affiliations

    Authors
    1. Claudia Perlich
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    Editor information

    Editors and Affiliations

    1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2052

      Claude Sammut

    2. Faculty of Information Technology, Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University, P.O. Box 63, Victoria, Australia, 3800

      Geoffrey I. Webb

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    © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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    Perlich, C. (2011). Learning Curves in Machine Learning. In: Sammut, C., Webb, G.I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Machine Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30164-8_452

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