The statistical use of the word "regression" derives from a phenomenon known as 'regression to the mean', attributed to Sir Francis Galton in 1889. He demonstrated that although tall fathers tend to have tall sons, the average height of the sons is less than that of their tall fathers. The average height of the sons has "regressed" or "gone back" towards the mean height of all the fathers in the population. So, on average, tall fathers have shorter (but still tall) sons and short fathers have taller (but still short) sons.