Research

No Free Lunch: What statistics can teach us about the limits of knowledge

Every measurement, whether in physics, statistics, or machine learning, comes with a cost. From Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to the limits of data prediction, Professor Xiao-Li Meng reminds us that knowledge itself is bounded by trade-offs. Precision and uncertainty are not opposites, they are partners in the same dance. In science, as in life, there is no free lunch.