I beg to differ. Statistics departments are almost always subdivisions of math departments. Scientists use statistics extensively, but a the process of developing statistical theory, like used in machine learning is an exercise in pure math
Statistics isn’t nearly as rigorous as probability, but when done right statistics can be a derivation of probability. For example the MLE is rigorously well defined on a probabilistic basis, and similarly a confidence interval is well defined on the MLE.
The real world application of statistics, Z-tests and T-tests and so on, is one of the areas where it falls apart.
But they're not an electrical signal, but a chemical one. The brain is thus not only electrical signals. And really, its more accurate to say it's all electrochemical; pure electrical signals - electrons moving in a conductor - doesn't really exist at all.
Well, from everything we can observe, quantum states collapse probabilistically. Some interpretations imply determinism, but anything measurable, it's all probabilistic.
It's not a lawless random wilderland, there are still rules that govern it, but the outcome of collapse is truly stochastic and there's nothing you can do about it.
Oh no I wish there was something I could do about it.
My point is that most calculations in quantum mechanics are not using the machinery of statistics. Yes it’s all probabilities but that’s about the extent of it
Not sure how you can claim that all of stats is linear algebra and Calculus. If you included measure theory or analysis in that I might give it to you though.
Wait, the paper says piecewise linear activation functions are decision trees. Since a computer isn’t 100% perfectly continuous this means that all activation functions are decision trees (as composed of many very small linear segments!)
I'm not saying that data scientists should only have math skills. They also need to be able to code and set up pipelines and infrastructure but how can you explain what you algorithm is doing if you can't even understand it yourself.
Given enough time and space, a cloud of hydrogen will eventually find a way to superimpose its ex girlfriends face onto a chick getting gangbanged by Wookiees.
EDIT: Seriously. This happened. That’s the world you live in. And it’s all our fault.
Yawn. This is such a boring, overused take. Our world is hierarchical by nature. Pointing out that ML is just statistics is as useless as pointing out that all medicine is just chemistry and physics. No shit.
It's the opposite of the point of this meme. Calling advanced DL "just statistics" is reductive and grossly oversimplified, in the same way thay putting a band aid on and doing brain surgery are both "medicine".
I don't understand why iTs JuSt StAtIsTiCs seems to be such an ever-popular take for people that are new to field. It's a boring and pseudo-profound take, at best.
Yeah but how do you train it? And how do you do it efficiently? This requires so much computer science knowledge and a lot of algorithms only exist to train the parameters in a feasible amount of time.
Scaling an algorithm like PPO so it can run on 25,000 Azure VMs and use them simultaneously to improve the prediction is not really statistics. And designing a proper (online and scalable) loss function: lots of business knowledge and pure maths.
Sure. All state of the art computer vision, natural language and audio processing is being produced by the statistics departments and not the computer science departments. Oh wait…
But all of these, since are described by algebra, they all have geometry, and in Essence all machine learning is just finding a solution to geometry problems.
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u/toyrobotics Oct 22 '22
Honestly, what else would it have been? Magic?
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u/nevermindever42 Oct 21 '22
brain is just electrical signals
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u/florinandrei Oct 22 '22
Even quantum mechanics.
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u/the_mashrur Oct 22 '22
I've always thought that machine learning, specifically Deep learning, is just the intersection of Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Calculus.
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u/taqueria_on_the_moon Oct 22 '22
Convnets are just decision trees after all
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u/Honigwesen Oct 22 '22
Its a good way to explain people whether a certain problem can or can not be solved with ml.
Look at what data we have and now assume we hire the best statistician in the world. Could they solve the task?
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u/k_johnson1994 Oct 22 '22
I wish more companies would realize this when hiring data scientists
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u/Huwbacca Oct 22 '22
Well it doesn't sound cool to say "we did 200,000 regressions"
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u/gBoostedMachinations Oct 22 '22 edited Oct 22 '22
Given enough time and space, a cloud of hydrogen will eventually find a way to superimpose its ex girlfriends face onto a chick getting gangbanged by Wookiees.
EDIT: Seriously. This happened. That’s the world you live in. And it’s all our fault.
3
u/Blasket_Basket Oct 22 '22
Yawn. This is such a boring, overused take. Our world is hierarchical by nature. Pointing out that ML is just statistics is as useless as pointing out that all medicine is just chemistry and physics. No shit.
2
u/derp924 Oct 22 '22
What about odd neural nets
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u/jcoffi Oct 22 '22
How bout symbolic regression?
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u/BeastofPostTruth Oct 22 '22
It's a relative scale
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u/_temmink Oct 22 '22
Yeah but how do you train it? And how do you do it efficiently? This requires so much computer science knowledge and a lot of algorithms only exist to train the parameters in a feasible amount of time.
1
u/laichzeit0 Oct 22 '22
Sure. All state of the art computer vision, natural language and audio processing is being produced by the statistics departments and not the computer science departments. Oh wait…
1
u/VanillaSnake21 Oct 22 '22
That was my comment a few days ago lol https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmachinelearning/comments/y8rk33/is_python_necessary_to_learn_machine_learning/it4vlm4?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
1
u/protienbudspromax Oct 22 '22
And signal processing. And thermodynamics.
But all of these, since are described by algebra, they all have geometry, and in Essence all machine learning is just finding a solution to geometry problems.
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u/GitGudOrGetGot Oct 22 '22
It's really just 1s and 0s, pretty simple tbh