In machine learning, a common task is the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data. Such algorithms function by making data-driven predictions or decisions, through building a mathematical model from input data. The data used to build the final model usually comes from multiple datasets. In particular, three datasets are commonly used in different stages of the creation of the model. The model is initially fit on a training dataset, which is a set of examples used to fit the parameters of the model. The model is trained on the training dataset using a supervised learning method, for example using optimization methods such as gradient descent or stochastic gradient descent. In practice, the training dataset often consists of pairs of an input vector and the corresponding output vector, where the answer key is commonly denoted as the target. The current model is run with the training dataset and produces a result, which is then compared with the target, for each input vector in the training dataset. Based on the result of the comparison and the specific learning algorithm being used, the parameters of the model are adjusted. The model fitting can include both variable selection and parameter estimation. Successively, the fitted model is used to predict the responses for the observations in a second dataset called the validation dataset. The validation dataset provides an unbiased evaluation of a model fit on the training dataset while tuning the model's hyperparameters. Validation datasets can be used for regularization by early stopping. This simple procedure is complicated in practice by the fact that the validation dataset's error may fluctuate during training, producing multiple local minima. This complication has led to the creation of many ad-hoc rules for deciding when overfitting has truly begun. Finally, the test dataset is a dataset used to provide an unbiased evaluation of a final model fit on the training dataset. If the data in the test dataset has never been used in training, the test dataset is also called a holdout dataset.
Training dataset
A training dataset is a dataset of examples used during the learning process and is used to fit the parameters of, for example, a classifier. Most approaches that search through training data for empirical relationships tend to overfit the data, meaning that they can identify and exploit apparent relationships in the training data that do not hold in general.
Validation dataset
A validation dataset is a dataset of examples used to tune the hyperparameters of a classifier. It is sometimes also called the development set or the "dev set". An example of a hyperparameter for artificial neural networks includes the number of hidden units in each layer. It, as well as the testing set, should follow the same probability distribution as the training dataset. In order to avoid overfitting, when any classification parameter needs to be adjusted, it is necessary to have a validation dataset in addition to the training and test datasets. For example, if the most suitable classifier for the problem is sought, the training dataset is used to train the candidate algorithms, the validation dataset is used to compare their performances and decide which one to take and, finally, the test dataset is used to obtain the performance characteristics such as accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, F-measure, and so on. The validation dataset functions as a hybrid: it is training data used for testing, but neither as part of the low-level training nor as part of the final testing. The basic process of using a validation dataset for model selection is: An application of this process is in early stopping, where the candidate models are successive iterations of the same network, and training stops when the error on the validation set grows, choosing the previous model.
Test dataset
A test dataset is a dataset that is independent of the training dataset, but that follows the same probability distribution as the training dataset. If a model fit to the training dataset also fits the test dataset well, minimal overfitting has taken place. A better fitting of the training dataset as opposed to the test dataset usually points to overfitting. A test set is therefore a set of examples used only to assess the performance of a fully specified classifier.
Holdout dataset
Part of the original dataset can be set aside and used as a test set: this is known as the holdout method.
Confusion in terminology
The terms test set and validation set are sometimes used in a way that flips their meaning in both industry and academia. In the erroneous usage, "test set" becomes the development set, and "validation set" is the independent set used to evaluate the performance of a fully specified classifier.
The literature on machine learning often reverses the meaning of “validation” and “test” sets. This is the most blatant example of the terminological confusion that pervades artificial intelligence research.
Cross-validation
A dataset can be repeatedly split into a training dataset and a validation dataset: this is known as cross-validation. These repeated partitions can be done in various ways, such as dividing into 2 equal datasets and using them as training/validation, and then validation/training, or repeatedly selecting a random subset as a validation dataset. To validate the model performance, sometimes an additional test dataset that was held out from cross-validation is used.
Hierarchical classification
Another example of parameter adjustment is hierarchical classification, which splits a complete multi-class problem into a set of smaller classification problems. It serves for learning more accurate concepts due to simpler classification boundaries in subtasks and individual feature selection procedures for subtasks. When doing classification decomposition, the central choice is the order of combination of smaller classification steps, called the classification path. Depending on the application, it can be derived from the confusion matrix and, uncovering the reasons for typical errors and finding ways to prevent the system make those in the future. For example, on the validation set one can see which classes are most frequently mutually confused by the system and then the instance space decomposition is done as follows: firstly, the classification is done among well recognizable classes, and the difficult to separate classes are treated as a single joint class, and finally, as a second classification step the joint class is classified into the two initially mutually confused classes.
