ABSTRACT
This quote came as a recommendation from a favorite professor to one of the authors while he was in the process of choosing a concentration topic for his comprehensive exam. The broader interpretation of the quote requires placing the descriptor in quotes, “regression,” but ask individuals with backgrounds as varied as social science graduate students or quality control officers in a paper mill to decipher the statement and they will think first of the linear regression model. Given the importance of the linear regression model in the history of statistical analysis, the emphasis that it receives in applied statistical training and its importance in real-world statistical applications, the narrower interpretation is quite understandable.
