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94 Passion for statisticsperiod. And that certainly helps with confidence. (You might find it reassuringto know that I have had plenty of rejections since.)IhadsixpapersonmyCVwhenIcameupfortenurein1984–85.AndIhadpublishednothingatallin1984.Iknowwhy:Ihadspentmostofayear trying to build a new EM theory, and then giving up on it. I was abit scared. Nowadays, and even then, my number would be considered belowaverage. Indeed, many of our recent Assistant Professor candidates at PennState University seem to have had that many when they arrived at PennState. Just the same, the people who wrote the external letters for me werevery supportive, and I was promoted with tenure.Back then it was still not obvious to me that statistics was the right placefor me. My wife Laura likes to remind me that some time in the 1980s I tolda graduate student that “Statistics is dead.” I can understand why I saidit. The major conceptual and philosophical foundations of statistics, thingslike likelihood, Bayes, hypothesis testing, multivariate analysis, robustness,and more, had already been developed and investigated. A few generationsof ingenious thought had turned statistics into an academic subject in itsown right, complete with Departments of Statistics. But that highly energeticcreative era seemed to be over. Some things had already fossilized, and theacademic game contained many who rejected new or competing points of view.It seemed that the mathematical-based research of the 1970s and 1980s had inlarge part moved on to a refinement of ideas rather than fundamentally newconcepts.But the granting of tenure liberated me from most of these doubts. I nowhad a seal of approval on my research. With this new confidence, I realizedthat, in a larger sense, statistics was hardly dead. In retrospect, I should havebeen celebrating my participation in a subject that, relative to many sciences,was a newborn baby. In particular, the computer and data revolutions wereabout to create big new and interesting challenges. Indeed, I think statisticsis much livelier today than it was in my green age. It is still a good place fordiscovery, and subject worthy of passion.For example, multivariate analysis is now on steroids, probing ever deeperinto the mysteries of high-dimensional data analysis, big p and little n, andmore. New techniques, new thinking, and new theory are arising hand inhand. Computational challenges that arise from complex models and enormousdata abound, and are often demanding new paradigms for inference. This isexciting! I hope my experiences have shed some light on your own passionatepursuits in the new statistics.