ABSTRACT
There has been an explosion of empirical approaches to scientific questions driven by the growing systematic collection of data. Though there has been great progress in developing quantitative statistical methods well suited to exploratory, data-driven analysis, there still remains much to be done for deriving estimators and robust inference of relevant parameters in such a context. The growth of so-called big data has inspired pattern-finding procedures, for instance, its use in evidenced-based methods for optimizing health care [1].
