hyperparameter

plural hyperparameters

1. Bayesian statisticsA parameter of a prior (as distinguished from inferred parameters of the model for the underlying system under analysis).

   this model has four hyperparameters

   1 more example

   The exact interpretation of these hyperparameters becomes clearer once you have seen their role in the posterior and, hence, we defer a deeper discussion of prior elicitation until the next section.

   2003, Gary Koop, Bayesian Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., page 19

   Synonyms: superparameter

2. machine learningA parameter whose value is set before the learning process begins.

   The ideal learning algorithm just takes a dataset and outputs a function, without requiring hand tuning of hyperparameters.

   2016, Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville, chapter 11, in Deep Learning, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 420

   1 more example

   “Model behaviour is not determined by architecture, hyperparameters, or optimizer choices,” he said, referring to the technical difficulties of training a language model. “It’s determined by your dataset, nothing else. […]”

   2024 May 4, Alex Hern, Dan Milmo, quoting James Betker, “Danger and opportunity for news industry as AI woos it for vital human-written copy”, in The Guardian, →ISSN