Overfitting occurs when the model learns the details and noise in the training data to the degree that it adversely impacts the execution of the model on new information. It is more likely to occur with nonlinear models that have more flexibility when learning a target function. An example would be if a model is looking at cars and trucks, but only recognizes trucks that have a specific box shape. It might not be able to notice a flatbed truck because there’s only a particular kind of truck it saw in training. The model performs well on training data, but not in the real world.

Underfitting alludes to a model that is neither well-trained on data nor can generalize to new information. This usually happens when there is less and incorrect data to train a model. Underfitting has both poor performance and accuracy.

To combat overfitting and underfitting, you can resample the data to estimate the model accuracy (k-fold cross-validation) and by having a validation dataset to evaluate the model.