Lazy learning is a machine learning approach that delays most generalization or computation until a prediction is requested. Rather than building a compact model during training, methods such as k-nearest neighbors store examples and compare new inputs at inference time.
In machine learning, lazy learning is a learning method in which generalization of the training data is, in theory, delayed until a query is made to the system, as opposed to in eager learning, where the system tries to generalize the training data before receiving queries.