Effective Amazon Machine Learning

The statistical approach versus the machine learning approach

In 2001, Leo Breiman published a paper titled Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures (http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1009213726) that underlined the differences between the statistical approach focused on validation and explanation of the underlying process in the data and the machine learning approach, which is more concerned with the results.

Roughly put, a classic statistical analysis follows steps such as the following:

1. A hypothesis called the null hypothesis is stated. This null hypothesis usually states that the observation is due to randomness.
2. The probability (or p-value) of the event under the null hypothesis is then calculated.
3. If that probability is below a certain ...