The History of Statistics

The subject Statistics, as it appears is not a new discipline but is as old as the human society itself. It
has been used right from the existence of life on this earth, although the sphere of its utility is very
much restricted.

A very warm welcome and hearty good morning to everyone present here. This is vanshika Bansal
going to brief you on the history of statistics.

In olden days statistics ‘was regarded as the 'science of State-craft' and, was the by-product of the
administrative activity of the State. The word 'Statistics' seems to be ‘derived from the Latin word'
status' , the Italian word' statista' and the German word' statistik' each means a 'political state'. In
ancient times, the government used to collect the information regarding the population and
'property or wealth' of the country the for enabling the government to have an idea of the
manpower of the country (to safeguard itself against external aggression, if any), and the latter
providing it a basis for introducing news taxes and levies'.

In India, an efficient system of collecting official and administrative statistics existed even 2000 years
ago, in particular, during the reign of Chandragupta Maurva (324-300 B.C.). Historical evidences
about the prevalence of a very good system of collecting vital statistics and registration of births and
deaths even before 300 B.C. are available in Kautilya’s ‘Arthashastra’.

The records of land, agriculture and wealth statistics were maintained by Todermal, the land and
revenue minister in the reign of Akbar (1556-1605 A.D). A detailed account of the administrative and
statistical surveys conducted during Akbar’s reign is available in the book “Ain-e- Akbari” written by
Abul Fazl (in 1596-97), one of the nine gems of Akbar.

Seventeenth century witnessed the origin of Vital Statistics. Captain John Graunt of London (1620-
1674), known as the Father of Vital Statistics, was the first man to make a systematic study of the
birth and death statistics.

Modern stalwarts in the development of the subject of Statistics are Englishmen who did pioneering
work in the application of Statistics to different disciplines. Francis Galton (1822-1921) pioneered the
study of ‘Regression Analysis’ in Biometry; Karl Pearson (1857-1936) who founded the greatest
statistical laboratory in England pioneered the study of ‘Correlation Analysis’.

Fisher (1890-1962) who applied statistics to a variety of diversified fields such as genetics, biometry,
psychology and education, agriculture, etc., and who is rightly termed as the Father of Statistics.

In India, National Statistics Day is celebrated on June 29 on the birth anniversary of late Professor
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Often referred to as the 'father of Indian statistics', Mahalanobis,
was born on June 29, 1893, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal.

PC Mahalanobis is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure and for
being one of the members of the first Planning Commission of India. The formula is used to find the
distance between a point and a distribution, based on measurements in multiple dimensions. It is
widely used in the field of cluster analysis and classification.
He founded the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and contributed to the design of large-scale sample
surveys. For his contributions, Mahalanobis has been considered the father of modern statistics in
India.

This day is celebrated to popularize the use of statistics in everyday life and how statistics help in
shaping and framing policies. On this day, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
(MoSPI) recognizes the outstanding performance of research work by declaring winners and
felicitating them.