[Gretl-users] Re: [Off-topic] Data scientists vs Statisticians

Dear all gretl friends, greetings from Nogent-sur-Marne (just near Paris !) Interesting piece on a never ending debate on modelling I guess... We are not near a definitive answer, as I think there is none but rather a need for sound practices anchored onto solid theoretical foundations. It is here that econometricians can surely contribute, as I remember a paper of an american philosopher who said that econometricians could surely say sound things to physicists... Anyway, I recommand to all reading (or rereading) the excellent paper of Leo Breiman: http://www2.math.uu.se/~thulin/mm/breiman.pdf statistical modeling: the two cultures (2002). By the way, as usual, when new approaches and methods nurture a lot of silly things and errors are again and again repeated... That is, the need to build the sound practices to avoid the most blatant blunders and errors as well as develop the rights way to tackle new problems with new tools... Here in France we are seeing an avalanche of spurious correlations, a reaaly new 150 years problem we all know, from peopple with quite pompous titles... On this topic I recommand also the work of the French philosopher Giuseppe Longo whose work on randomness and algorirthms is very intersting to all of us. His criticism of blind application of algorithms to any data set warns of the deluge of spurious correlations we are seeing here... his site an papers: https://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo/ Fact without theory, measure without theory, theory without facts, black box syndrome, blind application of methods without thinking about the relevance of the context. General to Specific or the reverse, egg or chicken... We must stay aware and try to clarify things in the current context. Better to know limits and strenghts of our methods and the dark spots of our practices. Well, I am getting too long. But very interesing videos ! I will share with my colleagues who are pûre simulation modellers... Cheers dear econometricians. All the best and sincerely. Franck. ========================================= Franck Nadaud CIRED UMR 8568 CNRS - EHESS, ENPC, AgroParisTech, CIRAD 45 bis avenue de la Belle Gabrielle 94736 Nogent-sur-Marne Cedex TEL: 33-1-43-94-73-94 FAX: 33-1-43-94-73-70 France =========================================