Machine Learning

Machine learning is the name for a very wide collection of techniques for exploring data and estimating functions, and we can only scratch the surface here. The field has expanded and diverged to the extent that it is hard to find common denominators. But we can say that most machine learning techniques do not focus on explanation or on uncertainty quantification, but on prediction. Machine learning is typically applied in cases where we have many data but not much understanding of causal pathways to guide our modelling.