Galton used the term regression to describe an observable fact in the inheritance of multi-factorial quantitative genetic traits: namely that the offspring of parents who lie at the tails of the distribution will tend to lie closer to the centre, the mean, of the distribution. He quantified this trend, and in doing so invented linear regression analysis. This is the starting point for much of modern statistical modelling. Since then, the term "regression" has taken on different meanings, and it may be used by modern statisticians to describe phenomena of sampling bias which have little to do with Galton's original observations in the field of genetics.