Regularization, in mathematics and statistics and particularly in the fields of machine learning and inverse problems, refers to a process of introducing additional information in order to solve an ill-posed problem or to prevent overfitting. This information is usually of the form of a penalty for complexity, such as restrictions for smoothness or bounds on the vector space norm.
A theoretical justification for regularization is that it attempts to impose Occam’s razor on the solution. From a Bayesian point of view, many regularization techniques correspond to imposing certain prior distributions on model parameters.
… Regularization Methods