Measuring the prediction error. A comparison of cross-validation, bootstrap and covariance penalty methods

The estimators most widely used to evaluate the prediction error of a non-linear regression model are examined. An extensive simulation approach allowed the comparison of the performance of these estimators for different non-parametric methods, and with varying signal-to-noise ratio and sample size. Estimators based on resampling methods such as Leave-one-out, parametric and non-parametric Bootstrap, as well as repeated Cross Validation methods and Hold-out, were considered. The methods used are Regression Trees, Projection Pursuit Regression and Neural Networks. The repeated-corrected 10-fold Cross-Validation estimator and the Parametric Bootstrap estimator obtained the best performance in the simulations. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.