📚 Learning Guide
Regularizers in Predictive Models
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How do penalty terms in regularization techniques assist in feature selection within predictive models?

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Learning Path
Learning Path

Question & Answer
1
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2
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3
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Choose the Best Answer

A

By increasing the model complexity

B

By shrinking coefficients of less important features to zero

C

By ensuring all features are included regardless of their relevance

D

By increasing the training data size

Understanding the Answer

Let's break down why this is correct

Answer

Penalty terms in regularization add a cost for using many or large coefficients, so the model prefers simpler explanations. Because each coefficient’s size is penalized, the optimization will shrink some coefficients toward zero; the ones that stay non‑zero are the most useful predictors. This automatic shrinking effectively drops irrelevant features, acting as a built‑in feature selector. For example, in Lasso regression a coefficient that contributes little to predicting the outcome is forced to zero, so that feature is removed from the final model. Thus, regularizers help keep models accurate while keeping only the most important features.

Detailed Explanation

Penalty terms act like a gentle hand that pulls small feature weights toward zero. Other options are incorrect because Some think the penalty makes the model more complex, but it actually does the opposite; A common mistake is to think the penalty forces every feature to stay in the model.

Key Concepts

penalty term
feature selection
Topic

Regularizers in Predictive Models

Difficulty

medium level question

Cognitive Level

understand

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