Summary
This editorial is part of a For-Discussion- Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the papers “The Evolution of Boosting Algorithms – From Machine Learning to
Statistical Modelling” [1] and “Ex-tending Statistical Boosting – An Overview of Recent
Methodological Developments” [2], written by Andreas Mayr and co authors. It preludes
two discussed reviews on developments and applications of boosting in biomedical research.
The two review papers, written by Andreas Mayr, Harald Binder, Olaf Gefeller, and
Matthias Schmid, give an overview on recently published methods that utilise gradient
or likelihood-based boosting for fitting models in the life sciences. The reviews
are followed by invited comments [3] by experts in both boosting theory and applications.