whats the difference between machine learning and statistics?

Question

in the Turing lecture 2010 Christopher Bishop talks about machine learning undergoing a revolution because statistics is being applied to machine learning algorithms...

but then its like all machine learning algorithms are all statistical algorithms.. whats the real difference between the two? why are they separate courses in most universities?

Answer 1

Statistics bases everything on probability models. A typical analysis starts by assuming your data are samples from a random variable with some distribution, then making inferences about the parameters of the distribution.

Machine learning may use probability models, and when it does, it overlaps with statistics. But machine learning isn't so committed to probability. It is willing to also use other approaches to problem solving that are not based on probability.