Beginner · Fundamentals

Regression

Visual diagram · (in preparation) · Math · (in preparation) · Worked example · 3 difficulty levels.

TL;DR. A supervised learning task that predicts a continuous numeric value.

Technical Definition

A supervised learning task that predicts a continuous numeric value.

How it works

Where classification picks a category, regression outputs a real number — predicting house prices, temperature, stock returns, or a person's age from a photo. Linear regression fits a straight line; polynomial, tree-based, and neural regressors model non-linear relationships. Evaluation typically uses MSE, MAE, or R².

Related Concepts

• Prediction — The output a trained model produces when given new input data.
• Supervised Learning — Learning from input–output pairs where each training example carries a correct label.
• Mean Squared Error (MSE) — The average squared difference between predictions and true values.