What is a confusion matrix?

A confusion matrix is indeed a table that is used to evaluate the performance of a classification model. It provides a straightforward way to visualize the performance of the model by comparing its predicted classifications against the actual classifications from the data.

The matrix typically consists of four components: True Positives (TP), False Positives (FP), True Negatives (TN), and False Negatives (FN). These components allow for the calculation of various performance metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score, which help in understanding how well the model is performing in distinguishing between different classes.

By providing a clear representation of how many predictions were correct and how many were incorrect across various classes, a confusion matrix helps practitioners diagnose the behavior of their classification algorithms and make informed adjustments to improve the model's accuracy. This makes it an essential tool in machine learning, particularly in supervised learning scenarios involving classification tasks.