While domain knowledge may have been instrumental in launching SPSS, the same statistics and data analysis methods apply across many knowledge domains.

FORBES: The First Data Scientist on the Evolution of Data Science and the Ever-Changing American Voter

Using more detailed statistics and more sophisticated methods than the earlier studies, this work has tended to find that immigrants' wages take longer to rise to the level of natives' wages than had been supposed.

ECONOMIST: Workers of the world | The

They took some well-known methods from statistics, including something called matrix factorization, added bits of knowledge about movie recommenders (like the fact that movies seen long ago tend to be rated highly) and then threw all of it against the wall to see what stuck.

FORBES: Digital Tools

The process of reporting cancer statistics is evolving, and methods change over time.

BBC: About our cancer statistics

They are collected by individual national statistics authorities who each have their own methods of collecting and collating information.

BBC: Are Greeks the hardest workers in Europe?

With this accreditation, customers can be assured that Adobe's methods for generating ad impression statistics are in accordance with industry-established guidelines published by the MRC.

ENGADGET: Adobe announces Project Primetime video platform, Highlights available now for iPad (update: video)

This rise in prestige has been mirrored by a revamp of undergraduate business programs, with the top ones increasingly resembling MBAs thanks to an emphasis on the rigorous study of economics, statistics and accounting and MBA-like teaching methods using case studies and team exercises.

CNN: Starting out young

He does not want public faith in census statistics to be undermined by partisan bickering over the methods that produced them.

ECONOMIST: The travails of a census man

Mental health treatment has not made a dent in suicide statistics, but reducing access to the most lethal methods can drastically lower overall suicide and murder rates.

CNN: Guns and suicide: One mother's heartbreaking tale