This homework will be focused on Leo Breiman’s paper Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures. Note the paper include commentary and a rejoinder – this is interesting, but you are welcome to skip it.
Write a couple paragraph summary of the paper and what you learned from it.
What are the two cultures and how do they differ?
Describe your educational training, prior to and including 505/506, in the context of Breiman’s two cultures.
Noting that this paper is from 2001, over 20 years ago, discuss the closing quote from the paper and whether we have survived as an “energetic and creative field”
The roots of statistics, as in science, lie in working with data and checking theory against data.I hope in this century our field will return to its roots. There are signs that this hope is not illusory. Over the last ten years, there has been a noticeable move toward statistical work on real world problems and reaching out by statisticians toward collaborative work with other disciplines. I believe this trend will continue and, in fact, has to continue if we are to survive as an energetic and creative field.