Which term describes the task of predicting a continuous outcome from a dataset?

Which term describes the task of predicting a continuous outcome from a dataset?

• A. Neural networks (NNs)
• B. Regression
• C. Classification
• D. Clustering methods

Answer: (B)

Predicting a continuous outcome from a dataset is regression. The goal is to learn a function that maps input features to a real-valued target, so the model outputs a number rather than a category. For example, estimating house prices from features like size and location, or forecasting temperature. Evaluation uses error metrics such as RMSE or MAE to measure how close the predictions are to the actual values. Some methods, including neural networks, can perform regression when they’re set up to predict a continuous value and trained with a regression loss. In contrast, classification predicts discrete labels, and clustering groups data without predefined targets.

Predicting a continuous outcome from a dataset is regression. The goal is to learn a function that maps input features to a real-valued target, so the model outputs a number rather than a category. For example, estimating house prices from features like size and location, or forecasting temperature. Evaluation uses error metrics such as RMSE or MAE to measure how close the predictions are to the actual values. Some methods, including neural networks, can perform regression when they’re set up to predict a continuous value and trained with a regression loss. In contrast, classification predicts discrete labels, and clustering groups data without predefined targets.