LFD Book Forum - Clarification on Q4

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Clarification on Q4

What does "target distribution" mean exactly in the context of Q4 ? All other definitions are clear to me from the lectures & book, except this one.

In my understanding the target function is determined, fixed, and it has no 'probabilistic aspect', as maybe the 'distribution' term suggests.

I would like to know what 'Stochastic noise does not depend on the target distribution' means in detail ?

Re: Clarification on Q4

Quote:

Originally Posted by OlivierB (Post 10997)

The target distribution describes the situation with noisy targets, where it is no longer a function but a function plus noise that is described by a distribution $P(y|{\bf x})$ . You can look at slide 16 of Lecture 4 for details (in the Machine Learning Video Library, the relevant segment is http://work.caltech.edu/library/044.html).

Re: Clarification on Q4

Thank you for the clarification.
The sentence now does make sense to me, in the context of Q4.