A.R Statistics

‘Statistics’ is derived from the Latin word ‘status’ which means a political

state. This suggests that statistics is as old as human civilisation. In the year 3050

B.C., perhaps the first census was held in Egypt. In India also, about 2000 years

ago, we had an efficient system of collecting administrative statistics, particularly,

during the regime of Chandra Gupta Maurya (324-300 B.C.). The system of

collecting data related to births and deaths is mentioned in Kautilya’s Arthshastra

(around 300 B.C.) A detailed account of administrative surveys conducted during

Akbar’s regime is given in Ain-I-Akbari written by Abul Fazl.2019-20

Captain John Graunt of London (1620-1674) is known as father of vital

statistics due to his studies on statistics of births and deaths. Jacob Bernoulli

(1654-1705) stated the Law of Large numbers in his book “Ars Conjectandi’,

published in 1713.

The theoretical development of statistics came during the mid seventeenth

century and continued after that with the introduction of theory of games and

chance (i.e., probability). Francis Galton (1822-1921), an Englishman, pioneered

the use of statistical methods, in the field of Biometry. Karl Pearson (1857-1936)

contributed a lot to the development of statistical studies with his discovery

of Chi square test and foundation of statistical laboratory in England (1911).

Sir Ronald A. Fisher (1890-1962), known as the Father of modern statistics,

applied it to various diversified fields such as Genetics, Biometry, Education,

Agriculture, etc.

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