Supervised Machine Learning for Science: How to stop worrying and love your black box

Machine learning has revolutionized science, from folding proteins and predicting tornadoes to studying human nature. While science has always had an intimate relationship with prediction, machine learning amplified this focus. But can this hyper-focus on prediction be justified? Can a machine learning model be part of a scientific model? Or are we on the wrong track?

In this book, we explore and justify supervised machine learning in science. However, a naive application of supervised lear...