Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all