In Season 3, Episode 24 of Pokémon the Series: Gold and Silver (“Wired for Battle!”), a top dojo student and Pokémon trainer battles protagonist Ash and loses. What the episode seems to impart is that experience tells the “real story” in a way that data analysis can’t. Ash’s competitor in this episode relies heavily on his database and predictive model for battling; Ash relies on his gut.

SPOILER:

Does Ash’s foe lose because his instincts are too poor? Is his machine learning lacking? Proper inference relies on the quality of both data and calculation using it. Perhaps the dojo fighter’s ML instincts (specifically, his “process”) need work!*

*I recognize this is not the central point of the episode: but, it still got into a data science mood… 🙂 As a former Pokémon simulator battler and user of many screens, this episode tugged me especially.