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Ground truth

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TL;DR. The actual reality or outcome of a situation, used to assess model performance.

Technical Definition

The actual reality or outcome of a situation, used to assess model performance.

How it works

Ground truth represents the objective reality or the correct answer for a given problem, which is used to evaluate how accurate a machine learning model's predictions are. For example, if a model predicts whether a student will graduate, the ground truth is whether that student actually graduated. While ideal, ground truth can sometimes be imperfect or contain errors itself.

Related Concepts

  • Evaluation — The process of measuring a model's quality or comparing different models.

Further Reading

  • Google ML Glossary