The grand tour is a technique originally developed by Daniel Asimov 1980–85, which is used to explore multivariate statistical data by means of an animation. The animation, or "movie", consists of a series of distinct views of the data as seen from different directions, displayed on a computer screen, that appear to change continuously and that get closer and closer to all possible views. This allows a human- or computer-based evaluation of these views, with the goal of detecting patterns that will convey useful information about the data.