I was wondering (about a more semantic question), is there a difference between data-driven methods and machine learning? Or is it more correct to state that machine learning is a category of data-driven methods (and what then are other categories)?
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1$\begingroup$ Can you give an example of a data-driven method that is not a machine-learning method? $\endgroup$– gingeCommented Jan 27, 2017 at 18:10
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$\begingroup$ You could see a simple t-test as a data-driven method, but I don't perceive this as a machine learning method (although of course they are related). $\endgroup$– ArchieCommented Jan 27, 2017 at 18:20
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2$\begingroup$ stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6/… $\endgroup$– EmreCommented Jan 27, 2017 at 18:39
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$\begingroup$ Thanks for the interesting discusion, though perhaps not conclusive for this question? $\endgroup$– ArchieCommented Jan 27, 2017 at 19:04
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$\begingroup$ "data-driven method" doesn't seem to be a well-defined term. so this question seems rather opinion based... maybe you can give a reference to where you came across this term repeatedly $\endgroup$– oW_Commented Jan 27, 2017 at 19:55
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2 Answers
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Based on the quotation you have added in your comments, data-driven approaches are approaches where you use data that describes past states ("historical data") to get a (not defined) system to give a desired output.
To understand whether this definition includes machine learning or not we will have to define "machine learning", and while there could be plenty of ways to define it I expect that it will be quite difficult to come up with a definition that does not include within it "Using a system that, based on given states will give a desired output".
Note that in this last definition I use "given states" and not "past states" as to include approaches such as online learning.
Bottom line is that unless you really want to hold to a narrow definition of "past states" it seems that machine learning approaches are a subset of data-driven approaches.
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In my view, Empirical Likelihood method is a very data-driven method but it has nothing to do with machine learning. Here is a link talking about the Empirical Likelihood method:
