If I want to build a house, wouldn't it be wise to learn carpentry? Does the analogy hold for data-analytic multivariate models? Or is it simply enough to let a machine do it, with no knowledge by the machine operator of how to interpret the results from those modeling efforts? Or is it true, as one person has recently asserted, that he could replicate ALL statistical procedures and techniques using MapReduce, without knowing anything about statistics and probability, or the vast collection…