diff --git a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/optimization/GradientDescentSuite.scala b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/optimization/GradientDescentSuite.scala
index 1c9b7c78e5b8d8cf2a66ecae27dfcfed71e1fa01..37eb794b0c5c9b2d7f83c3b2705613c2553231e5 100644
--- a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/optimization/GradientDescentSuite.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/optimization/GradientDescentSuite.scala
@@ -131,7 +131,7 @@ class GradientDescentSuite extends SparkFunSuite with MLlibTestSparkContext with
     assert(
       loss1(0) ~= (loss0(0) + (math.pow(initialWeightsWithIntercept(0), 2) +
         math.pow(initialWeightsWithIntercept(1), 2)) / 2) absTol 1E-5,
-      """For non-zero weights, the regVal should be \frac{1}{2}\sum_i w_i^2.""")
+      """For non-zero weights, the regVal should be 0.5 * sum(w_i ^ 2).""")
 
     assert(
       (newWeights1(0) ~= (newWeights0(0) - initialWeightsWithIntercept(0)) absTol 1E-5) &&