Parameters vs Hyperparameters in Neural Network

1. Story-Like Example

Imagine a chef in a kitchen trying to bake the perfect cake (the neural network is that cake).

  • Chef has ingredients: sugar, flour, eggs, etc. These are like parameters.
  • Chef chooses how long to bake, what temperature to use, how many layers to make — these are like hyperparameters.

2. Parameters vs Hyperparameters

Concept Analogy in the Story Neural Network Equivalent
Parameters The amount of sugar or flour used Weights and biases learned by the model
Hyperparameters Oven temperature, baking time Settings like learning rate, number of layers, batch size
Who sets it? Ingredients: adjusted by tasting (internally) Learned automatically during training
Who chooses it? Baking style: chosen by chef Set manually by humans before training

3. Definitions

Term Definition
Parameters Internal weights and biases the network learns from data.
Hyperparameters External configurations set before training that control how learning happens.

Parameters vs Hyperparameters in Neural Network – Parameters vs Hyperparameters with Simple Python