mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Transfer Learning for Linear Regression: a Statistical Test of Gain

arXiv 2102.09504 ↗First posted 18 Feb 2021math.ST cs.LG stat.MLcited by 10

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Abstract (arXiv)

Transfer learning, also referred as knowledge transfer, aims at reusing knowledge from a source dataset to a similar target one. While many empirical studies illustrate the benefits of transfer learning, few theoretical results are established especially for regression problems. In this paper a theoretical framework for the problem of parameter transfer for the linear model is proposed. It is shown that the quality of transfer for a new input vector x depends on its representation in an eigenbasis involving the parameters of the problem. Furthermore a statistical test is constructed to predict whether a fine-tuned model has a lower prediction quadratic risk than the base target model for an unobserved sample. Efficiency of the test is illustrated on synthetic data as well as real electricity consumption data.

Key facts. Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 4 of its 18 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Feb 2021.

Builds on

4 of 18 references.

References · 4

  1. 2016Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Computer-Aided Detection: CNN Architectures, Dataset Characteristics and Transfer Learningcited by 209
  2. 2018Transfer learning for time series classificationcited by 60
  3. 2020Double Double Descent: On Generalization Errors in Transfer Learning between Linear Regression Taskscited by 16
  4. 2013Data enriched linear regressioncited by 7

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 3; 2022: 3; 2023: 0; 2024: 1; 2025: 1; 2026: 2.

10 papers.

  1. 2021A Farewell to the Bias-Variance Tradeoff? An Overview of the Theory of Overparameterized Machine Learningcited by 57
  2. 2021The Common Intuition to Transfer Learning Can Win or Lose: Case Studies for Linear Regressioncited by 6
  3. 2022Transfer Learning with Kernel Methodscited by 5
  4. 2021Hierarchical transfer learning with applications for electricity load forecastingcited by 4
  5. 2024TL-PCA: Transfer Learning of Principal Component Analysiscited by 4
  6. 2022Transfer-Learning Across Datasets with Different Input Dimensions: An Algorithm and Analysis for the Linear Regression Casecited by 0
  7. 2022ISTRBoost: Importance Sampling Transfer Regression using Boostingcited by 0
  8. 2025When to Transfer: Adaptive Source Selection for Positive Transfer in Linear Modelscited by 0
  9. 2026Transfer Learning of Linear Regression with Multiple Pretrained Models: Benefiting from More Pretrained Models via Overparameterization Debiasingcited by 0
  10. 2026Tunable Domain Adaptation Using Unfoldingcited by 0