What is Statistical Learning?

Statistical learning plays a key role in many areas of science, finance and industry. Here are some examples of learning problems:Predict whether a patient, hospitalized due to a heart attack, will have a second heart attack. The prediction is to be based on demo- graphic, diet and clinical measurements for that patient.Predict the price of a stock in 6 months from now, on the basis of company performance measures and economic data.Identify the numbers in a handwritten ZIP code, from a digitized image.Estimate the amount of glucose in the blood of a diabetic person, from the infrared absorption spectrum of that person’s blood.Identify the risk factors for prostate cancer, based on clinical and demographic variables.The science of learning plays a key role in the fields of statistics, data mining and artificial intelligence, intersecting with areas of engineering and other disciplines. From The Elements of Statistical Learning (2nd edition) Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman (2009). Springer-Verlag. 763 pages. Full book can be downloaded here