Mathematical sciences is a group of areas of study that includes, in addition to mathematics, those academic disciplines that are primarily mathematical in nature but may not be universally considered subfields of mathematics proper. Statistics, for example, is mathematical in its methods but grew out of scientific observations which merged with inverse probability and grew through applications in the social sciences, some areas of physics and biometrics to become its own separate, though closely allied field. Computer science, computational science, population genetics, operations research, cryptology, econometrics, theoretical physics, and actuarial science are other fields that may be considered part of mathematical sciences.