The past’s future is now: What will the present’s future bring?

• Published in: Past, Present, and Future of Statistical Science pp. 347 - 358
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Chapman and Hall/CRC 2014
• Subjects: Symbolic Data; Data Sets; Maximum Monthly Temperatures; Airline Data; PC Point; Gibbs Sampler; Random Variables Y1; Principal Component Analysis; PC1; Visualization Construction; Observation C1; Automobile Insurers; Red Convertibles; Pulse Rate; PCA; Classical Surrogates; Census; Bernardi; Histogram Data; Standard Deviations Σ1; Arithmetical Arguments; Space Rp; Classical Observations; Gender Age Group; Yaguchi
• DOI: 10.1201/b16720-36

Articles published in the early years of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, i.e., 1888-1910s, posited new theories mostly by using arithmetical arguments. Starting around the mid-1910s the arguments became algebraic in nature and by the 1920s this trend was well established. Today, a century later, in addition to cogent mathematical arguments, new statistical developments are becoming computational, such is the power and influence of the modern computer (a device un-dreamed of in those earlier days). Likewise, we see enormous changes in the size and nature of assembled data sets for our study. Therefore, entirely new paradigms are entering our discipline, radically changing the way we go about our art. This chapter focuses on one such method wherein the data are symbolically valued, i.e., hypercubes in p-dimensional space Rp, instead of the classically valued points in Rp.