Ever the inquisitive data scientist, Nie is analyzing survey data to figure out how it all came about.

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"Our goal is to do what a top data scientist would do if given the user's data -- but to do it automatically in just a few seconds, " said Stephen Wolfram.

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If you can get a single data scientist to build one of these functions, then with a SQL wrapper you can expose it to business analysts.

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Indeed, it should be possible, the pair think, for the artificial scientist to build hypotheses directly from the data, spotting relationships that the humble graduate student or even his supervisor might miss.

ECONOMIST: Computing and biology: Arresting developments | The

What is it, then, when a scientist formulates a hypothesis that growth patterns follow temperature, and tests the hypothesis against data only to find that growth patterns do not follow temperature at all for 30% of the data and only partially for the rest?

ECONOMIST: Against the prevailing wind