hyperparameter

Noun

hyperparameter (plural hyperparameters)

1. (Bayesian statistics) A parameter of a prior (as distinguished from inferred parameters of the model for the underlying system under analysis).
   • this model has four hyperparameters
   • 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 learning) A 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
   • “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