Explain Gradient Descent optimization in Logistic Regression

Updated May 17, 2026

Short answer

Gradient Descent is an optimization algorithm used to minimize the Logistic Regression loss function by iteratively updating model parameters.

Deep explanation

Logistic Regression learns model parameters by minimizing a cost function called Log Loss (Cross Entropy Loss). Since there is no direct analytical solution for minimizing this loss in Logistic Regression, optimization algorithms such as Gradient Descent are used.

The central idea behind Gradient Descent is:

  • Start with random weights.
  • Measure prediction error.
  • Compute gradients (direction of steepest increase).
  • Move weights in the opposite direction.
  • Repeat until convergence.

The Logistic Regression hypothesis is:

h(x) = 1 / (1 + e^-(w·x + b))

The loss function is:…

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