Bach's lesson for the AI age

I’m not much of a mathematician which may seem a surprising admission for a statistician. However, the question of whether “Statistics” (the discipline, with a capital S) is a field within, or an applied science that overlaps with, “Mathematics” (capital M) was, certainly in the Eighties, a lively debate. Note too that “lively debate” means something different to statisticians from normal people. You would be unlikely to split your sides laughing at conversations about whether building a model to use clinical data to predict outcomes (a core statistical activity), counts as “doing” or “using” math. Whatever: my undergraduate degree required a lot of math, and my PhD thesis made use of lots of algebra and calculus. I call myself what I am: a statistician. But I do think of myself as belongi