[randartie]

>”But Watson won’t change its conclusions based on just four patients. To solve this problem, the Sloan Kettering experts created “synthetic cases” that Watson could learn from, essentially make-believe patients with certain demographic profiles and cancer characteristics.”

Is this standard practice in machine learning? This sounds more like regular programming to get exactly the outcome you want.

[scottlocklin]

It's standard practice for idiots. And apparently "Sloan Kettering experts."

There are semi-supervised techniques to do stuff like this in a more systematic/automated way, but you still don't get anything for free: the outcome depends on the priors used to do the semi-supervised voodoo. In a generous moment I might assume this is what they meant, but it's still dumb.