Fringe or Frontier?

Abstract

This essay contains a personal view of the place of mathematical statistics in mathematics and science, with an eye to the future. Statisticians are sometimes paid to make predictions, but they are trained to be careful and hedge their bets by giving an indication of its uncertainty. I shall be careful not to be specific, as far as the future is concerned. Most of the essay is concerned with the recent past (which surely contains the seeds of the future) and is built around some anecdotal case-studies of fascinating but in various senses paradoxical developments in the field.