The new hotness is an 18th century theorem

From Robot Economics:

"The ‘system’ behind the Google robotic cars that have driven themselves for hundreds of thousands of miles on the streets of several US states without being involved in an accident, or violating any traffic law, whilst analyzing enormous quantities of data fed to a central onboard computer from radar sensors, cameras and laser-range finders and taking the most optimal, efficient and cost effective route, is built upon the 18th-century math theorem known as Bayes’ rule."

Take that, machine learning! Statistics! But it would never have been possible without the computer scientists.

" Before the advent of increased computer power Bayes Theorem was overlooked by most statisticians, scientists and in most industries. Today, thanks to Professor Pearl, Bayes Theorem is used in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, reinforcement learning and big data mining.  IBM’s Watson, perhaps the most well known AI system, in all its intricacies, ultimately relies on the deceivingly simple concept of Bayes’ Rule in negotiating the semantic complexities of natural language."

The article is a quick and interesting read for we math/stat/data science geeks. Check it out.