[HN Gopher] A Software Tester's Perspective on Statistical Learn...
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       A Software Tester's Perspective on Statistical Learning Theory
        
       Author : bitforger
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2020-11-17 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mitchgordon.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mitchgordon.me)
        
       | jsinai wrote:
       | This is good humoured satire and reminds me of my first job as a
       | data scientist straight out of maths school. I was in a team
       | who's very existence was to advocate for ML everywhere and
       | anywhere, without much success because everyone (including the
       | stakeholders) failed to start from the fundamentals of the
       | problem.
       | 
       | Luckily I got out, upped my game and corrected course. Now in my
       | current role it is all about starting from basics and letting our
       | insights as well as the problem solving process (aka engineering)
       | guide our solution. The modelling approach we thought we'd do in
       | the first 3 months turned out to be absolutely wrong 7 months
       | later.
       | 
       | Don't get me wrong that ML is a waste of time. If you need to do
       | predictive modelling to solve your problem and if the complexity
       | is high enough that an ordinary linear model suffice (they
       | usually don't) or you need to model uncertainty as well, then ML
       | may very well get you from point A to B. And achieving that step
       | can be a worthwhile, rewarding and challenging endeavour.
       | 
       | The issue is when ML becomes a substitute for the fundamental
       | problem solving or is treated as a solution when it isn't.
        
       | fizixer wrote:
       | Machine learning is nowhere close to replacing the human coding
       | activity.
       | 
       | Machine learning is creeping up at newer and newer areas of
       | application in surprising ways, and ignoring it would put you at
       | peril as a tech worker. This is what I mean when I use the term
       | 'software 2.0'.
        
       | rsrsrs86 wrote:
       | Witty, but not wholly faithful to statistical learning theory
        
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       (page generated 2020-11-17 23:02 UTC)