what machine learning isn't statistical?

Asked Nov 25 '20 at 13:38

Active Apr 25 '21 at 09:16

Viewed 103 times

If I understand correctly, statistical learning theory is just one approach to machine learning,

What machine learning isn't statistical?

Based on my very limited understanding, I thought that things like PAC-learning or Empirical Risk minimization pretty much cover everything. Isn't statistics involved in all of this?

Is there any good source that clearly explains this?

EDIT

my comment below shows the answers I was looking for.

edited Apr 25 '21 at 09:16

asked Nov 25 '20 at 13:38

user3629892

1

The Two Cultures: statistics vs. machine learning? – user2974951 Nov 25 '20 at 13:42
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What is the difference between data mining, statistics, machine learning and AI? – user2974951 Nov 25 '20 at 13:42
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What would it mean to say something "isn't statistical"? – Ryan Volpi Nov 25 '20 at 14:10
@RyanVolpi Well, why is there the need to call it statistical learning theory? As opposed to what? – user3629892 Nov 25 '20 at 15:35
I take that to be the way that statisticians claim such territory that might be more dominated by computer science. – Dave Nov 25 '20 at 15:54
Even for the autonomous vehicles, while that is not traditionally a statistics problem, if they’re using convolutional neural networks to analyze images (as I suspect they are), then they’re fitting regression coefficients. – Dave Apr 18 '21 at 12:21
Finally got my answer: Statistical learning can be contrasted with the probabilistic setting (frequentist vs. bayesian). Statistical approaches (SVM, Ridge/lasso, decision trees) try to find the one best hypothesis, optimization is used.
In the probabilistic setting, we use Bayes rule for inference and need to keep track of all possible hypotheses (computationally expensive, explains use of MCMC or Gaussian distribution).

These two sometimes overlap (e. g. least squares viewed as MLE) but are fundamentally different.
– user3629892 Apr 25 '21 at 09:12
Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFcYpBOeCOQ&list=PL05umP7R6ij2XCvrRzLokX6EoHWaGA2cC and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2fUmhGTNrQ. Both lecture series are REALLY good. – user3629892 Apr 25 '21 at 09:13

what machine learning isn't statistical?

0 Answers0