Abstract: Humans have entered the era of big data. Research ideas and methods based on big data have gained much attention and start to apply widely in the field of geoscience. In our view, the subject of big data research is data, the tool is the computer, the method and means are to find out the correlation between data, and the characteristics is to make decisions based on probability criteria. To reiterate: big data is the idea and method of finding out the correlation between data; it researches problems and make correct decisions by mining large amounts of data. In this paper, we suggest that the inductive method is the way to carry out big data research, specially as its research power has been greatly enhanced by high performance computer and big data technology. Through an in-depth analyses of statistics and machine learning algorithm, we came to the conclusion that big data shall change the ways people learn and understand nature and scientific studies are designed and performed. And it shall subvert the long-standing habit of conducting scientific research by finding causal relationships. Big data shall create a new approach to conducting geoscience research across complex causal relationships and obtaining research results directly. We concluded in this study that with the explosive growth of data, and with popularization of high-performance computers and rapid development of computing technology, the statistical analysis method has largely broken through the limitation of data volume. This shall enable statistical analysis and prediction models to generate truer thus more reliable results. Ultimately, the ability to explain conditions and outcomes, combining with the advantages of machine learning algorithms for semi-structured and unstructured data, will make quantitative geoscience research truly feasible.

Key words: big data, statistical analysis, machine learning, data mining, new approach to geoscience research