An explanation needs to have explanatory power, which is a statistical concept. Also specificity. The "sum of numbers" explanation is not specific - it can be u

An explanation needs to have explanatory power, which is a statistical concept. Also specificity. The "sum of numbers" explanation is not specific - it can be used to justify anything. Additionally it has low power as minor changes will result in a different outcome. A Markov model can give you some of that information, unlike a neural net, but it is still hard to get them to be specific. An expert system can be specific and use an approach with good statistical power, but it's at a mercy of anyone putting the data in. (unless somehow extended to statistically evaluate the inputs too somehow)