What is Epoch?
One complete pass through all the training data during model training.
Epoch explained in plain English
An epoch is one complete pass through all the training data. If a model sees every example once, that counts as one epoch. Training usually requires many epochs before the system performs well.
Too few epochs may underfit; too many without safeguards may overfit.
Analogy
An epoch is like reading an entire textbook cover to cover once. Re-reading it multiple times — multiple epochs — helps the material sink in, though eventually you stop gaining much from repetition.
Example
Training logs for image models often show loss decreasing over epochs until performance plateaus.
How is Epoch used?
Common misconceptions about Epoch
More epochs are not always better — training too long on limited data can hurt generalisation.
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