What is the difference between precision and recall?

Updated May 17, 2026

Short answer

Precision measures correctness of positive predictions, while recall measures coverage of actual positives.

Deep explanation

Precision = TP / (TP + FP), recall = TP / (TP + FN). Precision focuses on false positives, while recall focuses on false negatives. Trade-off depends on application context like fraud detection or medical diagnosis.

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