**Preface to "Functional Statistics"**

Why use statistics and functional analysis? This is one of the most frequently asked questions with the rise of these types of techniques, especially when they are applied in areas other than mathematics, engineering, economics, etc. The reason is very straightforward: in this era of large amounts of data, most of the data available can be seen from a functional perspective, and thus, problems can be addressed through functional analysis and/or functional statistics. This book aims to build bridges between these two disciplines, which are sometimes far apart but are undoubtedly much closer than one imagines.

> **Javier Mart´ınez Torres** *Editor*
