Statistical Modeling: The Two Worlds (Breiman 2001)

| brunocm, on May 1st, 2009

This is a link to a paper by the late Leo Breiman that I came across recently and really enjoyed – I  highly recommend it to any analyst.  I wish I had come across years ago as it provides a great framework for understanding the interrelated worlds of statistics and predictive analytics. I’m sure I’ll continue to return to it in the future.

The paper itself is very thorough, a great example of a paper, as it includes comments by 5 colleagues and a final rejoinder by Breiman.

Breiman (1928-2005) was Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and had a career path that gave him a great perspective on the 2 worlds.

If you need to push through it the first time (especially in today’s bit-sized-twitter-ized world I think you will find it worth the effort.