The National Statistics Day is celebrated on June 29 on the birth anniversary of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a world-renowned statistician whose invaluable contributions led to the establishment of the National Statistical System in India. He is called the father of Indian Statistics.
Today, on his 129th birth day, the statistics fraternity across the country is celebrating the 15th National Statistics Day with the theme “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. It is an issue of significant relevance in the larger agenda of the country’s development priorities. Needless to say, a good statistical system is indispensable for policy formulation and to monitor the progress of various sectors of the economy. Statistics has, since beginning, been regarded as one of the most important tools for making decision in the midst of uncertainty.
There has been a phenomenal development of use of statistics in our everyday life. Our life is surrounded by numbers. Numbers bring in the concept of calculations. Calculations warrant the use of mathematical equations.
The point of this analysis is to arrive at a certain result or a solution to a practical problem. This entire process of translating simple numbers into meaningful results by collecting, organising, analysing and interpreting data is called statistics. Numbers are everywhere, Statistics extracts the information.Oxford Languages defines “Society” as the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
The very definition of this complex yet fundamental unit of human civilisation involves the word ‘aggregate’, which can be seen as a statistical concept.
The romance of statistics and society dates back to the ages of the Mahabharata when Nala used his knowledge of Sankhyana, the probability theory, and estimation to win Princess Damayanti. That was eons ago, but not much has changed today. With the World War 2 came in the concept of operations research. Even today, in this advanced age of science and technology when mankind is hit with the Covid-19 pandemic, doctors, scientists, virologists, Governments are all reliant upon statistical data and analysis to deal with the effective management of the pandemic.
Be it the use of Vital Statistics to keep track of the demography of the disease or the use of Operations Research techniques for effective management of vaccines, healthcare equipments and other essentials, it is statistics we are all dependent upon.
Data are the spine of effective governance. Without having knowledge of the demographic dividend of a particular region, the whereabouts concerning the benefactors of the scheme, it is not possible for a Government to formulate schemes and monitor its growth and impact. Health insurance which happens to be a necessary component of modern-day healthcare is entirely based upon a branch of statistics called Actuarial Sciences.
Every researcher needs data to support his hypothesis and prove its utility, efficacy and authenticity. Tests of Significance and the concept of Design of Experiments play a vital role in research projects. Statistics provide objectivity which happens to be the bedrock of scientific and social experiments.
Data analysis, the concept of index numbers, time series are fundamental not only to the budget formulation of a country but also to any business venture irrespective of its scale. It is statistically proven alarming facts about deforestation, carbon emissions and rise in global temperature which made humans realise the scale of damage they have inflicted upon the environment. A common man does not make any investment decision without studying the past statistics and future projections.
People often distrust statistics and feel they are misleading because they cannot understand the data. This occurs because the statisticians who produce data fail to make them relevant and explain them in terms that people can understand. A statistical story must be based on sufficient knowledge of the data and the phenomenon under study. The statisticians play an important role in the process by making available timely, reliable and credible statistics for objective decision making.
We must all remember that statistics are not just numbers but are also the key ingredients in the formulation of right plans and policies of a country. Statistics is a catalyst for the modern life and the basis of Government and community planning.
Maintaining it and promoting the importance of sustainable national statistical capacity to produce reliable and timely statistics happens to be the duty of every statistician.
Without statistics and statisticians, there would still be numbers along with people trying to interpret them. But statistics is central to how we think about the world. And the mere discrepancy between what we perceive and what something actually is happens to be a statistical concept called bias.
It is said that a society lives by faith and develops by science. Some may agree; some may not. However, you cannot be sure unless you look at the statistics. “Those who ignore statistics are condemned to reinvent it.”