The power of noise and the art of prediction.

Data analysis usually aims to identify a particular signal, such as an intervention effect. Conventional analyses often as- sume a specific data generation process, which suggests a theoretical model that best fits the data. Machine learning techniques do not make such an assumption. In fact, they encourage multiple models to compete on the same data. Ap- plying logistic regression and machine learning algorithms to real and simulated datasets with different features of noise and signal, we demonstrate that no single model dominates others under all circumstances. By showing when different models shine or struggle, we argue it is both possible and important to conduct comparative analyses