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P.G. Hall 163had some connection to probability or theoretical statistics, including one atthe Australian National University that was advertised with a preference forabiometrician.This was in 1977, and I assume that they had no plausible applicants inbiometrics, since they offered the position to me. However, the Head of Department,Chip Heathcote, asked me (quite reasonably) to try to migrate myresearch interests from probability to statistics. (Biometrics wasn’t required.)He was very accommodating and nice about it, and in particular there wasno deadline for making the switch.I accepted the position and undertook to make the change, which I foundthat I quite enjoyed. On my reckoning, it took me about a decade to movefrom probability to statistics, although some of my colleagues, who perhapswouldn’t appreciate that Einstein’s remark above, about physics, might applyto statistics as well, would argue that I have still got a way to go. I eased myselfinto statistics by taking what I might call the “contemporary nonparametric”route, which I unashamedly admit was much easier than proceeding along aparametric path.At least in the 1970s and 1980s, much of nonparametric statistics (functionestimation, the jackknife, the bootstrap, etc) was gloriously ad hoc. Thebasic methodology, problems and concepts (kernel methods, bias and varianceestimation, resampling, and so forth) were founded on the fact that theymade good intuitive sense and could be justified theoretically, for examplein terms of rates of convergence. To undertake this sort of research it wasnot necessary to have at your fingertips an extensive appreciation of classicalstatistical foundations, based for example on sufficiency and efficiency andancillarity and completeness and minimum variance unbiasedness. Taking anonparametric route, I could start work immediately. And it was lots of fun.I should mention, for the benefit of any North American readers who havegot this far, that in Australia at that time there was virtually no barrierbetween statistics and probability. Practitioners of both were in the samedepartment, typically a Department of Statistics, and a Mathematics Departmentwas usually devoid of probabilists (unless the department also housedstatisticians). This was one of many structures that Australian universitiesinherited from the United Kingdom, and I have always found it to be an attractive,healthy arrangement. However, given my background you’d probablyexpect me to have this view.The arrangement persists to a large extent today, not least because manyAustralian Statistics Departments amalgamated with Mathematics Departmentsduring the budget crises that hit universities in the mid to late 1990s.Amodernexception,morecommontodaythanthirtyyearsago,isthatstrongstatistics groups exist in some economics or business areas in Australian universities,where they have little contact with probability.