As a scientific discipline, analytics came into existence a few decades ago. It has its origins in the government sponsored research for military purposes starting in the 1940s, like many other computing technologies. By the 1950s, large corporations started seeing it as a technology that could be taken to the market. The applications of predictive analysis (PA) have found utility in many areas, notably: weather forecasting, air travel optimization and credit risk evaluation. The increasing utility and acceptance of PA as a means to understanding trends encouraged academic circles to take greater interest in it. This in turn led to more research in modeling techniques and operations research in the 60s.