It was indeed a great honor and pleasure to present the first Sir Richard Stone Lectures in London in May 2001. My thanks go to the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and the Cambridge University Press (CUP) for instituting the Stone Lectures and inviting me to be the first speaker in this series. I appreciate very much the opportunity to express my thoughts on the outstanding contributions of Sir Richard Stone and on statistics, econometrics and forecasting.

As explained to me by Martin Weale, director of the NIESR, and my editor at CUP, the first 2001 Stone Lecture was to be presented at the Bank of England with many “non-technical” attendees in the audience. Thus, in the first Lecture I decided to treat some broad, basic issues involved in Stone's, and others', work in statistics, econometrics and forecasting, since these are important for both non-technical and technical individuals and often are not well treated in standard textbooks. Indeed, it may be advisable to consider introducing good courses in the philosophy of science in the curricula of departments and schools of statistics, economics and econometrics, as is already the case in the programs of some departments of physics and other sciences. Issues such as (1) “What is science?” (2) “What is causality?” and (3) “What definition of probability is most useful in scientific work?” can be considered, along with many others, and thereby help to eliminate confusion that sometimes lasts a lifetime.