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Points of Significance

Statistics versus machine learning

Statistics draws population inferences from a sample, and machine learning finds generalizable predictive patterns.

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Figure 1: Simulated expression and RNA-seq read counts for 40 genes in which the last 10 genes (A–J) are differentially expressed across two phenotypes (−/+).
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Figure 2: Analysis of gene ranking by classical inference and ML.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Bzdok, D., Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. Statistics versus machine learning. Nat Methods 15, 233–234 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4642

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