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## Estimating Generalization Error with the PRESS statistic

As we’ve mentioned on previous occasions, one of the defining characteristics of data science is the emphasis on the availability of “large” data sets, which we define as “enough data that statistical efficiency is not a concern” (note that a “large” data set need not be “big data,” however you choose to define it). In particular, we advocate the use of hold-out data to evaluate the performance of models.

There is one caveat: if you are evaluating a series of models to pick the best (and you usually are), then a single hold-out set is strictly speaking not enough. Hastie, et.al, say it best:

Ideally, the test set should be kept in a “vault,” and be brought out only at the end of the data analysis. Suppose instead that we use the test-set repeatedly, choosing the model with smallest test-set error. Then the test set error of the final chosen model will underestimate the true test error, sometimes substantially.

— Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning, 2nd edition.

The ideal way to select a model from a set of candidates (or set parameters for a model, for example the regularization constant) is to use a training set to train the model(s), a calibration set to select the model or choose parameters, and a test set to estimate the generalization error of the final model.

In many situations, breaking your data into three sets may not be practical: you may not have very much data, or the the phenomena you’re interested in are rare enough that you need a lot of data to detect them. In those cases, you will need more statistically efficient estimates for generalization error or goodness-of-fit. In this article, we look at the PRESS statistic, and how to use it to estimate generalization error and choose between models.