Polly, I completely agree with your that we should invest our energy in the opportunity at hand and strive for adoption by delivering value. This is all that matters at the end of the day.

While historians examine and argue over the size, shape and pattern of our foot-steps in the un-named (analytics? no, can't call it that, statistics? nope... argh) sands of time, we should be boldly charting new paths to amazing places and enjoy the fantastic scenery and discoveries along the way. What does it matter what our foot-steps are called if we get to where we need to be? How would it matter if our foot-steps are correctly pigeon-holed into some arbitrary taxonomy but we are standing still and stagnating?

When you go to a hardware store and buy a drill, you don't really want the drill, you want the hole that it can make. Similarly, organizations don't want statisticians, mathematicians, O.R. practitioners, or data scientists, they just want their problems solved. Our raison d'etre is to show them how it can be solved. We need to do whatever it takes for that problem, be it simple statistics or big data or optimization or time series or machine learning or any combination thereof. Just do it! Get it done! Enlarge the pie through success. While people argue what to call our markings, I'm going to celebrate our success with Champagne in my hands and a Big Smile on my face!

What's in a name, truly, not much. Now let the flame war begin!