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Train and Test Datasets in Machine Learning

The document explains the importance of training and test datasets in machine learning, highlighting that the training dataset is used to fit the model while the test dataset evaluates its performance on unseen data. It discusses the differences between the two datasets, the need for splitting data to prevent overfitting, and the common issues of overfitting and underfitting. Additionally, it outlines the process of training and testing models using these datasets.

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Sunil Mehta
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6 views6 pages

Train and Test Datasets in Machine Learning

The document explains the importance of training and test datasets in machine learning, highlighting that the training dataset is used to fit the model while the test dataset evaluates its performance on unseen data. It discusses the differences between the two datasets, the need for splitting data to prevent overfitting, and the common issues of overfitting and underfitting. Additionally, it outlines the process of training and testing models using these datasets.

Uploaded by

Sunil Mehta
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Train and Test datasets in Machine Learning

Machine Learning is one of the booming technologies across the world that
enables computers/machines to turn a huge amount of data into predictions.
However, these predictions highly depend on the quality of the data, and if
we are not using the right data for our model, then it will not generate the
expected result. In machine learning projects, we generally divide the
original dataset into training data and test data. We train our model over a
subset of the original dataset, i.e., the training dataset, and then evaluate
whether it can generalize well to the new or unseen dataset or test
set. Therefore, train and test datasets are the two key concepts of
machine learning, where the training dataset is used to fit the
model, and the test dataset is used to evaluate the model.

In this topic, we are going to discuss train and test datasets along with the
difference between both of them. So, let's start with the introduction of the
training dataset and test dataset in Machine Learning.

What is Training Dataset?


The training data is the biggest (in -size) subset of the original
dataset, which is used to train or fit the machine learning model.
Firstly, the training data is fed to the ML algorithms, which lets them learn
how to make predictions for the given task.

For example, for training a sentiment analysis model, the training data could
be as below:

Input Output (Labels)

The New UI is Great Positive

Update is really Slow Negative

The training data varies depending on whether we are using Supervised


Learning or Unsupervised Learning Algorithms.

For Unsupervised learning, the training data contains unlabeled data


points, i.e., inputs are not tagged with the corresponding outputs. Models are
required to find the patterns from the given training datasets in order to
make predictions.
On the other hand, for supervised learning, the training data contains labels
in order to train the model and make predictions.

The type of training data that we provide to the model is highly responsible
for the model's accuracy and prediction ability. It means that the better the
quality of the training data, the better will be the performance of the model.
Training data is approximately more than or equal to 60% of the total data
for an ML project.

What is Test Dataset?


Once we train the model with the training dataset, it's time to test the model
with the test dataset. This dataset evaluates the performance of the model
and ensures that the model can generalize well with the new or unseen
dataset. The test dataset is another subset of original data, which is
independent of the training dataset. However, it has some similar types
of features and class probability distribution and uses it as a benchmark for
model evaluation once the model training is completed. Test data is a well-
organized dataset that contains data for each type of scenario for a given
problem that the model would be facing when used in the real world. Usually,
the test dataset is approximately 20-25% of the total original data for an ML
project.

At this stage, we can also check and compare the testing accuracy with the
training accuracy, which means how accurate our model is with the test
dataset against the training dataset. If the accuracy of the model on training
data is greater than that on testing data, then the model is said to have
overfitting.

The testing data should:

o Represent or part of the original dataset.


o It should be large enough to give meaningful predictions.

Need of Splitting dataset into Train and Test set


Splitting the dataset into train and test sets is one of the important parts of
data pre-processing, as by doing so, we can improve the performance of our
model and hence give better predictability.

We can understand it as if we train our model with a training set and then
test it with a completely different test dataset, and then our model will not
be able to understand the correlations between the features.
Therefore, if we train and test the model with two different datasets, then it
will decrease the performance of the model. Hence it is important to split a
dataset into two parts, i.e., train and test set.

In this way, we can easily evaluate the performance of our model. Such as, if
it performs well with the training data, but does not perform well with the
test dataset, then it is estimated that the model may be overfitted.

For splitting the dataset, we can use the train_test_split function of scikit-
learn.

The bellow line of code can be used to split dataset:

1. from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split


2. x_train, x_test, y_train, y_test= train_test_split(x, y, test_size= 0.2, ran
dom_state=0)

Explanation:

In the first line of the above code, we have imported the train_test_split
function from the sklearn library.

In the second line, we have used four variables, which are

o x_train: It is used to represent features for the training data


o x_test: It is used to represent features for testing data
o y_train: It is used to represent dependent variables for training data
o y_test: It is used to represent independent variable for testing data
o In the train_test_split() function, we have passed four parameters.
Which first two are for arrays of data, and test_size is for specifying the
size of the test set. The test_size may be .5, .3, or .2, which tells the
dividing ratio of training and testing sets.
o The last parameter, random_state, is used to set a seed for a random
generator so that you always get the same result, and the most used
value for this is 42.

Overfitting and Underfitting issues


Overfitting and underfitting are the most common problems that occur in the
Machine Learning model.

A model can be said as overfitted when it performs quite well with the
training dataset but does not generalize well with the new or unseen dataset.
The issue of overfitting occurs when the model tries to cover all the data
points and hence starts caching noises present in the data. Due to this, it
can't generalize well to the new dataset. Because of these issues, the
accuracy and efficiency of the model degrade. Generally, the complex model
has a high chance of overfitting. There are various ways by which we can
avoid overfitting in the model, such as Using the Cross-Validation method,
early stopping the training, or by regularization, etc.

On the other hand, the model is said to be under-fitted when it is not


able to capture the underlying trend of the data. It means the model
shows poor performance even with the training dataset. In most cases,
underfitting issues occur when the model is not perfectly suitable for the
problem that we are trying to solve. To avoid the overfitting issue, we can
either increase the training time of the model or increase the number of
features in the dataset.

Training data vs. Testing Data


o The main difference between training data and testing data is that
training data is the subset of original data that is used to train the
machine learning model, whereas testing data is used to check the
accuracy of the model.
o The training dataset is generally larger in size compared to the testing
dataset. The general ratios of splitting train and test datasets
are 80:20, 70:30, or 90:10.
o Training data is well known to the model as it is used to train the
model, whereas testing data is like unseen/new data to the model.

How do training and testing data work in Machine


Learning?
Machine Learning algorithms enable the machines to make predictions and
solve problems on the basis of past observations or experiences. These
experiences or observations an algorithm can take from the training data,
which is fed to it. Further, one of the great things about ML algorithms is that
they can learn and improve over time on their own, as they are trained with
the relevant training data.

Once the model is trained enough with the relevant training data, it is tested
with the test data. We can understand the whole process of training and
testing in three steps, which are as follows:

1. Feed: Firstly, we need to train the model by feeding it with training


input data.
2. Define: Now, training data is tagged with the corresponding outputs
(in Supervised Learning), and the model transforms the training data
into text vectors or a number of data features.
3. Test: In the last step, we test the model by feeding it with the test
data/unseen dataset. This step ensures that the model is trained
efficiently and can generalize well.

The above process is explained using a flowchart given below:

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