At the beginning of the twentieth century, some minor algebraic investigations grabbed the interest of a small group of American mathematicians.  The problems they worked on had little impact at the time, but they may nevertheless have had a subtle effect on the way in which mathematics has been taught over the past century.

90% of the world’s data have been generated in the last five years. A small fraction of these data is collected with the aim of validating specific hypotheses. These studies are led by the development of mechanistic models focussed on the causality of input-output relationships. However, the vast majority of the data are aimed at supporting statistical or correlation studies that bypass the need for causality and focus exclusively on prediction.