Machine learning - can it help traders - check this out

[thenews]

This is The Economist (magazine) on machine learning; the article relates to its application to public policy, but its of interest to trading decisions too (or not?):

• Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University  ...  problem (that) require predictions based, implicitly or explicitly, on lots of data ... Many areas of policy, he suggests, could do with a dose of machine learning
• Machine-learning systems excel at prediction
• A common approach is to train a system by showing it a vast quantity of data ...  The software chews through the examples and learns which characteristics are most helpful in predicting

The article does not appear to be gated and is worth a read, if not as a trader then even just for interest (IMO). Its not a new development, but may be new to you, and while we wait for Asia to get more active, here it is: Of prediction and policy