Psycho-history

From UoWiki

That branch of mathematics which deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli. ...Implicit in all these definitions is the assumption that the human conglomerate being dealt with is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment. A further necessary assumption is that the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psycho-historic analysis in order that its reactions be truly random.

Foundation, Isaac Asimov. Bantam, New York, 1991.