Strength in diversity: The advance of data analysis

Abstract

The scientific analysis of data is only around a century old. For most of that century, data analysis was the realm of only one discipline - statistics. As a consequence of the development of the computer, things have changed dramatically and now there are several such disciplines, including machine learning, pattern recognition, and data mining. This paper looks at some of the similarities and some of the differences between these disciplines, noting where they intersect and, perhaps of more interest, where they do not. Particular issues examined include the nature of the data with which they are concerned, the role of mathematics, differences in the objectives, how the different areas of application have led to different aims, and how the different disciplines have led sometimes to the same analytic tools being developed, but also sometimes to different tools being developed. Some conjectures about likely future developments are given. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.