[dang]

> While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it.

Sounds like a job for the community! Maybe someone will track it down...

Edit: I tried something like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&... (note the custom date range) but didn't find anything that quite matches your description.

[z2]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613

This was from 2017, and it made such an impression on me that I could find it on my first search attempt!

[ontouchstart]

“… machine learning everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a complex structure and low noise, and statistics everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a large amount of noise.”

[ontouchstart]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182