Related papers: Leo Breiman
This paper establishes grounds for deeper exploration into the question of dual nature of mathematics as an abstract discipline and as a concrete science. It is argued, as one of the consequences of the discussion, that the division into…
While data science has emerged as a contentious new scientific field, enormous debates and discussions have been made on it why we need data science and what makes it as a science. In reviewing hundreds of pieces of literature which include…
Attention is drawn to problems associated with superstatistics, including the apparent lack of knowledge of previous work in statistical physics displayed by workers in this supposedly new field.
Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions…
Breiman organizes "Statistical modeling: The two cultures" around a simple visual. Data, to the far right, are compelled into a "black box" with an arrow and then catapulted left by a second arrow, having been transformed into an output.…
The rapid ascent of artificial intelligence (AI) is often portrayed as a revolution born from computer science and engineering. This narrative, however, obscures a fundamental truth: the theoretical and methodological core of AI is, and has…
Several authors, including the American Statistician (ASA), have noted the challenges facing statisticians when attacking large, complex, unstructured problems, as opposed to well-defined textbook problems. Clearly, the standard paradigm of…
Inverse problems, where in broad sense the task is to learn from the noisy response about some unknown function, usually represented as the argument of some known functional form, has received wide attention in the general scientific…
As David Berlinski writes (1997), the existence and nature of mathematics is a more compelling and far deeper problem than any of the problems raised by mathematics itself. Here we analyze the essence of mathematics making the main emphasis…
Although information theory resolves inconsistencies (known under the form of famous enigmas) of the traditional approach of thermostatistics, its place in the corresponding literature is not what it deserves. This article supports the idea…
The use of statistical software in academia and enterprises has been evolving over the last years. More often than not, students, professors, workers, and users, in general, have all had, at some point, exposure to statistical software.…
This is the English version of my inaugural lecture at Coll\`ege de France in 2021, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxktplKMhKU. I reflect on the difficulty of multi-disciplinary research, which often hinges of unexpected…
The field of data science currently enjoys a broad definition that includes a wide array of activities which borrow from many other established fields of study. Having such a vague characterization of a field in the early stages might be…
We give a survey of the foundations of statistical queries and their many applications to other areas. We introduce the model, give the main definitions, and we explore the fundamental theory statistical queries and how how it connects to…
Motivated by a recent series of diametrically opposed articles on the relative value of statistical methods for the analysis of path diagrams in the social sciences, we discuss from a primarily theoretical perspective selected fundamental…
Twenty years ago Breiman (2001) called to our attention a significant cultural division in modeling and data analysis between the stochastic data models and the algorithmic models. Out of his deep concern that the statistical community was…
Although data science builds on knowledge from computer science, mathematics, statistics, and other disciplines, data science is a unique field with many mysteries to unlock: challenging scientific questions and pressing questions of…
Quantitative linguistics has been allowed, in the last few decades, within the admittedly blurry boundaries of the field of complex systems. A growing host of applied mathematicians and statistical physicists devote their efforts to…
I published an interview of Leo Breiman in Statistical Science [Olshen (2001)], and also the solution to a problem concerning almost sure convergence of binary tree-structured estimators in regression [Olshen (2007)]. The former summarized…
Algebraic statistics is concerned with the study of probabilistic models and techniques for statistical inference using methods from algebra and geometry. This article presents a list of open mathematical problems in this emerging field,…