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ML Academy

Introduced on day 26

Prediction interval

A range intended to contain a single future observation with a stated probability; it includes the observation's own noise and so does not shrink to zero width with more data.

In detail

Contrast with a confidence interval, which describes uncertainty about a parameter such as a mean. For a forecast, an 80% prediction interval is usually the pair of quantiles at 0.1 and 0.9 of the forecast distribution. It is only as good as the error distribution it assumes; check coverage on held-out data at the horizon of use.