The paper is a personal exploration of the puzzling contradiction between the fundamental excitement of statistics and its poor public image. It begins with the historical foundations and proceeds through the role of applications and the dramatic impact of the computer in shaping the discipline....

Models of consumer behaviour that are based purely on empirical relationships in data can perform well in the short term but often degrade rapidly with changing circumstances. Superior longer-term performance can sometimes be attained by developing models for the deeper processes underlying the...