
Chapter 1
Preliminaries
1.1 Introduction
Researchers would agree that statistical methods are of fundamental importance to
their scientific investigations, which explains the substantial developments in sta-
tistical methodology and computing in recent years. On the other hand, there has
been very little progress on the foundations of statistical inference. These founda-
tional considerations are of the utmost importance, as they distinguish Statistics as a
branch of Science and not just a collection of methods for scientists to use. Moreover,
there are now alternatives—machine learning, data science, etc—poised to challenge
Statistics, so setting a