.. _kernel_ridge:

===========================
Kernel ridge regression
===========================

.. currentmodule:: sklearn.kernel_ridge

Kernel ridge regression (KRR) [M2012]_ combines :ref:`ridge_regression`
(linear least squares with l2-norm regularization) with the `kernel trick
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_method>`_. It thus learns a linear
function in the space induced by the respective kernel and the data. For
non-linear kernels, this corresponds to a non-linear function in the original
space.

The form of the model learned by :class:`KernelRidge` is identical to support
vector regression (:class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR`). However, different loss
functions are used: KRR uses squared error loss while support vector
regression uses :math:`\epsilon`-insensitive loss, both combined with l2
regularization. In contrast to :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR`, fitting
:class:`KernelRidge` can be done in closed-form and is typically faster for
medium-sized datasets. On the other hand, the learned model is non-sparse and
thus slower than :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR`, which learns a sparse model for
:math:`\epsilon > 0`, at prediction-time.

The following figure compares :class:`KernelRidge` and
:class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` on an artificial dataset, which consists of a
sinusoidal target function and strong noise added to every fifth datapoint.
The learned model of :class:`KernelRidge` and :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` is
plotted, where both complexity/regularization and bandwidth of the RBF kernel
have been optimized using grid-search. The learned functions are very
similar; however, fitting :class:`KernelRidge` is approximately seven times
faster than fitting :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` (both with grid-search).
However, prediction of 100000 target values is more than three times faster
with :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` since it has learned a sparse model using only
approximately 1/3 of the 100 training datapoints as support vectors.

.. figure:: ../auto_examples/miscellaneous/images/sphx_glr_plot_kernel_ridge_regression_001.png
   :target: ../auto_examples/miscellaneous/plot_kernel_ridge_regression.html
   :align: center

The next figure compares the time for fitting and prediction of
:class:`KernelRidge` and :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` for different sizes of the
training set. Fitting :class:`KernelRidge` is faster than
:class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` for medium-sized training sets (less than 1000
samples); however, for larger training sets :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` scales
better. With regard to prediction time, :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR` is faster
than :class:`KernelRidge` for all sizes of the training set because of the
learned sparse solution. Note that the degree of sparsity and thus the
prediction time depends on the parameters :math:`\epsilon` and :math:`C` of
the :class:`~sklearn.svm.SVR`; :math:`\epsilon = 0` would correspond to a
dense model.

.. figure:: ../auto_examples/miscellaneous/images/sphx_glr_plot_kernel_ridge_regression_002.png
   :target: ../auto_examples/miscellaneous/plot_kernel_ridge_regression.html
   :align: center


.. topic:: References:

    .. [M2012] "Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective"
      Murphy, K. P. - chapter 14.4.3, pp. 492-493, The MIT Press, 2012
