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Commonly confused · AI & Machine Learning

Classification vs Regression: What's the Difference?

Both are supervised learning tasks. Classification predicts a discrete category or label, such as spam or not spam, while regression predicts a continuous numeric value, such as a price or temperature.

Classification

Full definition
vs

Regression

Full definition
ClassificationRegression
Output typeDiscrete class labelContinuous number
Example questionWill this customer churn?How much will this customer spend?
Common algorithmsLogistic regression, decision trees, random forest, SVMLinear regression, ridge/lasso, gradient boosted regressors
Evaluation metricsAccuracy, precision, recall, F1, ROC-AUCMAE, MSE, RMSE, R-squared
VisualDecision boundary separating classesBest-fit line or curve
Remember it

Classification answers which one; regression answers how much.

Exam tip

Despite its name, logistic regression is a classification algorithm. Pick the task from the output type described in the scenario.

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