Essay

Compare the impacts of simple and weighted averaging of regional accuracies on a classifier's evaluation metric.

Question: When evaluating a classifier across four distinct markets (US, China, India, and Other), explain why a machine learning team might choose to combine these individual regional accuracy scores using a weighted average rather than a simple arithmetic average. How does this decision impact how well the final single-number evaluation metric reflects business goals?

Sample answer: A simple average treats all regional markets equally, regardless of differences in user volume, active traffic, or business value. In contrast, a weighted average allows a machine learning team to assign specific weights to each market's accuracy metric based on its strategic importance or population size. This ensures that the final single-number evaluation metric aligns with business goals, preventing performance changes in small, low-priority markets from disproportionately skewing the overall metric or hiding poor performance in a primary market.

Key points:

  • A simple average weighs all tracking markets equally regardless of user population or business significance.
  • A weighted average assigns varying weights to individual regional metrics based on strategic importance or volume.
  • The resulting single-number metric represents the true overall performance relative to business goals.
  • Using weights prevents smaller markets from masking poor performance in primary target markets.

Rubric: The response must explain the difference between a simple average and a weighted average when combining regional metrics, detail how weights can represent market significance or traffic volume, and describe how this choice aligns the evaluation metric with business goals.

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Updated 2026-05-27

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Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Supervised Learning

Dive into Deep Learning @ D2L

Data Science

Machine Learning Strategy

Machine Learning Yearning @ DeepLearning.AI

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