Ask HN: Dumb Machine Learning question – how to get insights, not predictions?

3 points by thenomad ↗ HN
I've been trying to dig into ML and figure out the answer to this question, but so far I'm repeatedly and enthusiastically hitting brick walls. So I thought I'd ask the assembled brains here.

Say I have a large corpus of data on, say, esport teams' makeup and performance, along with whether they won or not. (Or alternatively, visitors to a website and whether or not they converted, or whatever.)

I've got about 10-20 different fields describing each team - what heroes they picked, what they did in the game, etc - and then a binary win/loss.

I know how to train an ML model to predict whether a team will win based on that data.

But how do I use an ML model to extract insights about what makes a team more likely to win? Stuff like "if 3 people picked these 3 heroes and then 1 person went to this location on the map, there's a 75% chance that the team wins"?

I can find data visualisers allowing humans to pick through data and look for trends, but I can't find a way to get a machine to do it. And I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious here.

So - is this doable with ML techniques, and if so, how would you do it?

2 comments

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There is a deep and important difference between a reliable prediction and an actual explanation.