A parametric model can be split into two parts: a static structure and a dynamic set of parameters. The former is determined by the choice of a specific algorithm and is normally immutable (except in the cases when the model provides some remodeling functionalities), while the latter is the objective of our optimization. Considering n unbounded parameters, they generate an n-dimensional space (imposing bounds results in a subspace without relevant changes in our discussion) where each point, together with the immutable part of the estimator function, represents a learning hypothesis H (associated with a specific set of parameters):
The goal of a parametric learning process is to find the best hypothesis whose corresponding prediction error is at minimum and the residual generalization ability is enough to avoid overfitting. In the following diagram, we can see an...