Simple example to illustrate Ordinary Least Squares, Ridge and Lasso Regression

Let us assume that our design matrix is given by unit (identity) matrix, that is a square diagonal matrix with ones only along the diagonal. In this case we have an equal number of rows and columns \( n=p \).

Our model approximation is just \( \tilde{\boldsymbol{y}}=\boldsymbol{\beta} \) and the mean squared error and thereby the cost function for ordinary least sqquares (OLS) is then (we drop the term \( 1/n \))

$$ C(\boldsymbol{\beta})=\sum_{i=0}^{p-1}(y_i-\beta_i)^2, $$

and minimizing we have that

$$ \hat{\beta}_i^{\mathrm{OLS}} = y_i. $$