RE: DM: Datamining tools ... black boxes...

While there is a technical sense in which Warren is correct, I think the
more common usage in data mining is that elucidated by Ronny and Sergei.
Also, remember that whether the "constituents and means of operation" are
"known" or "unknown" is relative. To the programmers who designed the
software (and people like Warren and Ronny), the guts of the algorithm are
well understood; to the business analyst who must use the results of the
algorithm to make decisions, in at least some cases the algorithm may as
well be white magic from Planet Z-prime. The business analyst doesn't
understand the algorithm, so *to him* it really is a black box.

The definition quoted by Warren refers to an electric circuit with unknown
means of operation, but *someone* must know how it works or how could they
have built it? When a person calls something a black box, it's because *that
person* doesn't know how it works, not because *nobody* knows how it works.

	
--Clay

Clay Helberg                           http://www.execpc.com/~helberg/
SPSS Documentation                      chelberg@spss.com
Speaking only for myself....



-----Original Message-----
From: Warren Sarle [mailto:saswss@unx.sas.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 4:01 PM
To: datamine-l@nautilus-sys.com
Subject: 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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