pruning

2. The act of reducing something, such as costs or staff, to make it smaller or more efficient.

The company's pruning of unnecessary expenses helped it save money.

3. In computing, the process of removing parts of a decision tree or network that are not useful.

Tree pruning keeps the model simple and prevents overfitting.

4. The act of removing unwanted or superfluous material from writing or information.

Careful pruning of the report made it much clearer.