What is variance in cost function context?

Updated May 15, 2026

Short answer

Variance measures how much model predictions change with data.

Deep explanation

High variance leads to overfitting and unstable cost across datasets.

Real-world example

Deep decision trees overfitting training data.

Common mistakes

  • Ignoring validation loss.

Follow-up questions

  • How to reduce variance?
  • What is bias-variance tradeoff?

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