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I have already seen several related questions: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

The answer to 1 states

Regularization attemts to reduce the variance of the estimator by simplifying it, something that will increase the bias, in such a way that the expected error decreases.

How do we show, mathematically, that regularization (say $L_2$ or others) increases bias and decreases variance? None of the answers to the linked questions seem to "prove" this.

I am aware of the Bias-Variance tradeoff: $$\mathbb{E}\big[(\hat{\theta}-\theta)^2\big] = \mathbb{E}\big[\hat{\theta}-\theta\big]^2 + \mathbb{E}\big[(\hat{\theta}-\mathbb{E}(\hat{\theta}))^2\big]$$

muser
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  • good question, of course this won't be true for all $\theta$; we need to make some assumptions about it. You may be interested in this reading: https://efron.ckirby.su.domains//other/CASI_Chap7_Nov2014.pdf – John Madden Nov 14 '22 at 03:08

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