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IMO the major revolution was the move towards statistics, especially when using observational data. Moving from a parametric to a non-parametric model or whatev

• LeanderK 5y ago
  > Chucking a bunch of variables into a linear regression, getting an r^2 of 0.3 and calling it day In reality chucking a bunch of variables into a linear regression is the easy part (well, with exceptions), getting ,or creating, good, interesting and important data that were not already analysed to death is a problem. Imho the revolution is the realising value in observational data and not using statistics. It's all about the data. When discussing machine learning, data-mining or statistics with somebody far removed from the machinery (so for example from linguistics to biology), they always focus on what's possible with the tools but in reality the available data is what's constraining everything. Most tools (especially fancy ones like neural networks etc.) only work under certain constraints the are hard to achieve, it's not a hammer. You can always use a hammer and get results.