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15We live in exciting timesPeter G. HallDepartment of Mathematics and StatisticsUniversity of Melbourne, AustraliaandDepartment of StatisticsUniversity of California, Davis, CA15.1 Introduction15.1.1 The beginnings of computer-intensive statisticsMy involvement in statistics research started at about the time that significantinteractive computing power began to become available in universitystatistics departments. Up until that point, those of us using powerful electroniccomputers in universities generally were at the mercy of punch cardsoperating main frame computers, typically at relatively distant locations. Thisseverely hindered the use of computers for assessing the performance of statisticalmethodology, particularly for developing new approaches. However, oncecomputational experiments could be performed from one’s desk, and parametersettings adjusted as the results came in, vast new horizons opened up formethodological development.The new statistical approaches to which this led were able, by virtue ofpowerful statistical computing, to do relatively complex things to data. Formany of us, Cox’s regression model (Cox, 1972), and Efron’s bootstrap (Efron,1979a), became feasible only in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Efron (1979b)gave a remarkably prescient account of the future relationship between theoryand computation in modern statistics, noting that:“The need for a more flexible, realistic, and dependable statistical theoryis pressing, given the mountains of data now being amassed. Theprospect for success is bright, but I believe the solution is likely tolie along the lines suggested in the previous sections — a blend oftraditional mathematical thinking combined with the numerical andorganizational aptitude of the computer.”157