Faced with the realization that the frequency definition of probability theory did not permit most real-life scientific problems to be addressed, a new subject was invented — statistics! To estimate the mass of Saturn, for example, one has to relate the mass to the data through some function called the statistic; since the data are subject to ‘random’ noise, the statistic becomes the random variable to which the rules of probability the- ory can be applied. But now the question arises: How should we choose the statistic? The frequentist approach does not yield a natural way of doing this and has, therefore, led to the development of several alternative schools of orthodox or conventional statis- tics. The masters, such as Fisher, Neyman and Pearson, provided a variety of different principles, which has merely resulted in a plethora of tests and procedures without any clear underlying rationale. This lack of unifying principles is, perhaps, at the heart of the shortcomings of the cook-book approach to statistics that students are often taught even today.