Foreword for "Least Squares Data Fitting with Applications" by P. C. Hansen, V. Pereyra and G. Scherer. To be published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Scientific computing is founded in models that capture the properties of systems under investigation, be they engineering systems; systems in natural sciences; financial, economic, and social systems; or conceptual systems such as those that arise in machine learning or speech processing. For models to be useful, they must be calibrated against "real-world" systems and informed by data. The recent explosion in availability of data opens up unprecendented opportunities to increase the fidelity, resolution, and power of models --- but only if we have access to algorithms for incorporating this data into models, effectively and efficiently. For this reason, least squares --- the first and best-known technique for fitting models to data --- remains central to scientific computing. This problem class remains a fascinating topic of study from a variety of perspectives. Least-squares formulations can be derived from statistical principles, as maximum-likelihood estimates of models in which the model-data discrepancies are assumed to arise from Gaussian white noise. In scientific computing, they provide the vital link between model and data, the final ingredient in a model that brings the other elements together. In their linear variants, least-squares problems were a foundational problem in numerical linear algebra, as this field grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. From the perspective of optimization, nonlinear least-squares has appealing structure that can be exploited with great effectiveness in algorithm design. Least squares is foundational in another respect: It can be extended in a variety of ways: to alternative loss functions that are more robust to outliers in the observations, to one-sided "hinge loss" functions, to regularized models that impose structure on the model parameters in addition to fitting the data, and to "total least squares" models in which errors appear in the model coefficients as well as the observations. This book surveys least-squares problems from all these perspectives. It is both a comprehensive introduction to the subject and a valuable resource to those already well versed in the area. It covers statistical motivations along with thorough treatments of direct and iterative methods for linear least squares and optimization methods for nonlinear least squares. The later chapters contain compelling case studies of both linear and nonlinear models, with discussions of model validation as well as model construction and interpretation. It conveys both the rich history of the subject and its ongoing importance, and reflects the many contributions that the authors have made to all aspects of the subject. Stephen Wright Madison, Wisconsin, USA