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algorithmclassificationnaivebayes

What is "naive" in a naive Bayes classifier?


What is naive about Naive Bayes?


Solution

  • There's actually a very good example on Wikipedia:

    In simple terms, a naive Bayes classifier assumes that the presence (or absence) of a particular feature of a class is unrelated to the presence (or absence) of any other feature, given the class variable. For example, a fruit may be considered to be an apple if it is red, round, and about 4" in diameter. Even if these features depend on each other or upon the existence of the other features, a naive Bayes classifier considers all of these properties to independently contribute to the probability that this fruit is an apple.

    Basically, it's "naive" because it makes assumptions that may or may not turn out to be correct.