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It should be, but the fact that the xs and not the parameters is squared confuses me.

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A parabola can be directly seen as a linear model. You do not need any activation function. Let a general parabola equation

$$y=ax^2+bx+c$$

If you use the features $x$ and $x^2$ then $y$ is linear with respect to $a,b,c$ and you can simply run a linear regression that will estimates $a,b,c$.

It can be surprising to see that a parabola is linear in some sense, but the trick is that the word "linear" in linear regression means linear with respect to the coefficients (here $a,b,c$) not the feature (here $x$).

Lelouch
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  • Thank you! In fact, I don't understand the concept. If the linear regression is linear with respect to the parameters, what is the difference between y=beta0+betax1^2+betax2 and beta0+beta1x1+beta2^2x2? I mean, what is the difference between a function with parameters squared and features squared? – Gaia Mancassola May 07 '22 at 08:45
  • Maybe you should look at how a (multiple) linear regression model is defined. The features are your observations/data and the parameters are what are actually estimated. The model assumes that the predicted value $y$ can be written (on average, conditionally to the data) as a linear combination of features, and the coefficients of the linear combination are the $\beta_i$. Maybe this link can be useful too : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_regression – Lelouch May 07 '22 at 12:37