Differences between “Approach,” “Perspective,” and “Paradigm”

differencessynonymstechnicalword-choice

My question is related to this one: Differences between “methods”, “methodologies” and “paradigms”

In lectures, we learned

In statistical practice, there are two main schools of thought or
paradigms:

  1. frequentist
  2. Bayesian

Moreover, on the shelf we have books with titles like Decision Analysis: A Bayesian Approach or Machine Learning: A Bayesian and Optimization Perspective

I was wondering what are the differences between Approach, Perspective, and Paradigms?

Best Answer

"Approach" implies a hands-on style. "Perspective" is more theoretical. "Paradigm" is similar to perspective, but implies that some specific model will be used, i.e., it will be a "systematic" perspective.

  • What's your approach to saving money? (How do you do it?)
  • What's your perspective on saving money? (How do you look at it?)
  • What's your money saving paradigm? (What's the actual model?)

Sometimes these three terms are used interchangeably.

Source: my experience as a CS/Math undergrad.

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