Cross-validation as the objective function for variable-selection techniques

Different methods of cross-validation are studied for their suitability to guide variable-selection algorithms to yield highly predictive models. It is shown that the commonly applied leave-one-out cross-validation has a strong tendency to overfitting, underestimates the true prediction error, and should not be used without further constraints or further validation. Alternatives to leave-one-out cross-validation and other validation methods are presented. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.