11 Important Model Evaluation Techniques Everyone Should Know

Model evaluation metrics are used to assess goodness of fit between model and data, to compare different models, in the context of model selection, and to predict how predictions (associated with a specific model and data set) are expected to be accurate. Confidence intervals are used to assess how reliable a statistical estimate is. Wide confidence intervals mean that your model is poor (and it is worth investigating other models), or that your data is very noisy if confidence intervals don't improve by changing the model (that is, testing a different theoretical statistical distribution for your observations.) Modern confidence intervals are model-free, data -driven: click here to see how to compute them. A more general framework to assess and reduce sources of variance is called analysis of variance.