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Revisiting Rashomon: A Comment on “The Two Cultures” (arxiv.org)
1 point by agnosticmantis on Apr 7, 2021 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Many models can fit the data equally well while using it in different ways, so picking one can lead to shaky conclusions or automated decisions. Recent machine learning work on this puzzle, the piece argues, is a good meeting ground for Breiman's two camps.

Abstract · Revisiting Rashomon: A Comment on "The Two Cultures"

Here, I provide some reflections on Prof. Leo Breiman's "The Two Cultures" paper. I focus specifically on the phenomenon that Breiman dubbed the "Rashomon Effect", describing the situation in which there are many models that satisfy predictive accuracy criteria equally well, but process information in the data in substantially different ways. This phenomenon can make it difficult to draw conclusions or automate decisions based on a model fit to data. I make connections to recent work in the Machine Learning literature that explore the implications of this issue, and note that grappling with it can be a fruitful area of collaboration between the algorithmic and data modeling cultures.

Alexander D'Amour
arXiv:2104.02150 · stat.ML, cs.LG · submitted Apr 5, 2021
abstract · pdf · html · Commentary to appear in a special issue of Observational Studies, discussing Leo Breiman's paper "Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures" (https://doi.org/10.1214/ss/1009213726) and accompanying commentary

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