Predictive vs Explanatory modeling

In my past work I've become familiar with various techniques for *predictive* modeling--NNs, of course, but also more "classical" methods like random forests or LASSO regression (along with their implementations in Python, which was probably one of the best decisions I ever made was picking up Python--I've loved using sklearn and nltk, and I haven't even gotten to using pytorch yet).

All that said, I haven't worked as much so far with *explanatory* modeling and I'm looking to get more …

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