Practical Statistics for Data Scientists: 50 Essential Concepts

by Peter Bruce

Moreover, data science (and business in general) is not so worried about statistical significance, but more concerned with optimizing overall effort and results.

Nowhere is the nexus between statistics and data science stronger than in the realm of prediction — specifically the prediction of an outcome (target) variable based on the values of other “predictor” variables.

Machine learning tends to be more focused on developing efficient algorithms that scale to large data in order to optimize the predictive model. Statistics generally pays more attention to the probabilistic theory and underlying structure of the model.