Re: DM: Datamining tools ... black boxes...

Warren Sarle wrote:

  > > "Some Data Mining tools are presented like black boxes" simply because
  > > they ARE black boxes. It is not possible to make much sense of say, a
  > > trained
  > > Neural Network or the Memory Based Reasoning algorithm results. You have
  > > to believe the underlying math in order to trust their predictions.
  >
  > That is not what "black box" means. "Black box" means you know what
  > is supposed to go into it and you know what is supposed to come out
  > of it, but you you don't know how the computation is done inside the
  > "box". It has nothing to do with interpretability of results. With
  > respect to commercial software, "black box" means that the algorithms
  > used inside the software are undocumented.
  >

Ronny Kohavi replied:

 > I beg to differ here, Warren; I agree with Sergei.
 > A black box means that you know the characteristics of the construct/box,
 > but it's "black" because the internals are unspecified or not understood
 > by the person looking at the box.

Unspecified internals, yes. Understanding has nothing to do with it.
 From the American Heritage Dictionary:

    black box: A device or theoretical construct, especially an
    electric circuit, with known or specified performance
    characteristics but unknown or unspecified constituents and
    means of operation.

--

Warren S. Sarle       SAS Institute Inc.   The opinions expressed here
saswss@unx.sas.com    SAS Campus Drive     are mine and not necessarily
(919) 677-8000        Cary, NC 27513, USA  those of SAS Institute.

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