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Published three times a year, the ISI Newsletter provides a broad overview of the Institute's activities, and also includes additional information of interest to statisticians. The Newsletter is sent to all members of the ISI and its Sections (approx. 5,000) as part of their membership.
Editors: W. Senden, Ada van Krimpen and Ms. S. Mehta, Graphic Designer: Mr. H. Lucas
Message from the President
Dear Colleagues
I am extremely pleased to announce the appointment of a new Director of the ISI. As from August 1st, Ada van Krimpen has taken up this position. Some of you will already know Ada who joins us from the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics. I hope that others of you will have the opportunity to get to know Ada at the forthcoming ISI Conference in Durban. I am very excited about this appointment as I have every confidence that Ada will help the ISI and ISI Sections to develop their services and activities. I am sure you all join me in wishing her a very successful period at the ISI.
I am writing this sitting in the sunshine next to a canal in The Hague on a Sunday before a two-day visit to the ISI Office. On checking into my hotel, I was delightfully surprised to discover that also staying there for the weekend were some 300 statisticians from official agencies across Europe. They were competing in a volleyball competition that I understand was won by the team from Russia.
Plans for the ISI Session in Durban from 16th-22nd August are well advanced and I urge you to register your attendance for what promises to be a rich programme across the whole spectrum of statistics. May I particularly draw your attention to the exciting array of training courses being run in the week before the Conference itself. These will appeal not only to statisticians at the start of their careers, but also to those wishing to update their professional knowledge.
As President of the ISI, I gave an invited talk at a small and intensive meeting organised by the Observatoire de la Finance and the University of Geneva. One of the sessions focused on the implications for statistics of the current financial crisis – a topic that will loom large at our Durban Session.
I have recently been invited to join the newly formed European Statistical Advisory Committee, which provides me with an opportunity to represent the views of users of statistics. I welcome feedback from ISI and Section members on the ways in which the European statistical system should develop and on how it should be integrated with data from other regions to provide a global picture.
My ISI-related activities since I last wrote to you have included a visit to Statistics South Africa to work with Jairo Arrow and colleagues on the organisation of the ISI Session. This was followed by a fascinating three days in Luanda, Angola, to attend the 4th Africa Symposium on Statistical Development, which focussed on Processing Census Data in the Africa 2010 round of Population and Housing Censuses. Particularly impressive was the large number of young African participants in the Symposium with their typically infectious enthusiasm for our subject.
The Royal Statistical Society has also been active in career development for young statisticians and I was delighted to contribute to a well-attended meeting showcasing the wide variety of opportunities in statistics. I look forward to hearing your views on how we can involve more young and mid career statisticians in the ISI. 85% of ISI members are aged over 50. We are simply not nominating enough statisticians to be members of the ISI and I urge you to think about colleagues and contacts who might be interested in having their names put forward. The procedure is very easy these days and you can find the nomination forms on the web: http://isi.cbs.nl/candidateform.asp.
The ISI Executive met for two days in London and a summary appears in this ISI Newsletter (more). We also took the opportunity to discuss the future of the International Statistical Review with Wiley-Blackwell and will be reporting back on our ideas for the future of the ISR shortly.
Wim Senden who has been Acting Director of the ISI since 1st August 2008 completed this assignment and I would like to record our deepest thanks to him for his capable leadership of the ISI Office during this period.
May I conclude by offering my sincere congratulations to Pedro Morettin, the deserved winner of the Mahalanobis Prize, and to Jae C. Lee, Vijay Nair, Louis Chen and Hallgrímur Snorrason for their election to the Executive Committee of the ISI, which will take office at the end of the Durban Conference. But it is also appropriate to pay tribute to those who work behind the scenes. In these cases, most notably Lynne Billard who chaired the Mahalanobis Committee and Jelke Bethlehem who acted as member auditor for the ISI elections (a new position which I created to provide greater accountability of our system).
With my very best wishes, I look forward to seeing you in Durban.
Denise Lievesley,
President ISI
d.lievesley@uclmail.net
Top
Message from the Directors
This is my last message because my interim directorship ended 1st of June. I originally promised to serve the ISI for six months until February. Some delay and setbacks in the search for a new director made me agree to continue ultimately until June. Although the nomination of a new director was not finalised by June, considering another continuation was for personal reasons not an option for me. It was a decision with mixed feelings, especially because the way that you all (members and Office staff) have received me from the beginning: Open and cordial, certainly justifiying the term “family” for this institute/society.
Ten months seem like a long time, but are not enough to get to know and understand in-depth the ISI family as I was so unlucky to prove rather explicitly. Lack of knowledge and time pressure were the causes for a big mistake I made in the organisation of the voting process for some changes of the Statutes and Bylaws, where the French translation of the documents was forgotten. It was generous of President Denise and President-Elect Jef to cover for me, but it was my responsibility to do it right! I hope that you all, but especially the French speaking members of the ISI, will accept my sincere apologies and that my mistake has not influenced your vote.
In discussions on Restructuring, the architectural adagium “form follows content” came up, suggesting that it would be better to direct ISI focus and energy now more towards content, while implementing restructuring in small steps. Two interesting ideas in that respect could be the following ones. The unfortunate events of last year made the general public aware of concepts like risk, predictability, reliable data and models. The ISI itself should use this opportunity to develop, via workshops, conferences and maybe white papers, a forum for sound understanding of these issues. The primary target group would not be the professionals in the ISI family but other professions like politicians and journalists. Many important societal problems and interesting research questions arise at the borders of the areas covered by the Sections. The ISI is unique in having this all in house, however, it does not capitalise this enough (as far as I know) in joint workshops, conferences and projects.
It was an interesting, sometimes very demanding job I had these past months, but I enjoyed doing it. I thank the staff at the PO for their help and loyalty and thank the EC, especially Denise and Jef for their trust and support.
May I end with wishing the ISI and you all a prosperous future.
On another note, if you have not yet registered, please do so and come to Durban.
Thanks,
Wim Senden
Former Director ISIMy appointment as Director of ISI from 1st of August onwards is a big honor for me. I am looking forward to fulfilling this position and to contributing to the goal of making ISI and its Sections flourishing networks of statisticians.
For 16 years now I have been working in International Relations at Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Before coming to the CBS, I was employed by the Faculty of Economics of Erasmus University Rotterdam and during that time I completed my studies in Business Law in the Faculty of Law of Erasmus University. In 1993, I started as International Relations Officer for CBS where I could really build on my desire to work in an international environment. During the first years, I participated in the technical assistance programs to countries in Central Asia and Caucasus, which was a rich experience. In the context of the European Statistical System, a lot of initiatives were launched as well as new ways of working. Looking back, it is really good to see what was achieved over the years: new co-operative networks, new ways of communicating, and above all the new Regulation on European Statistics (the European Statistical Law). Apart from EU meetings, I had the privilege to represent the CBS in the UN Statistical Commission, ECE/CES and OECD CSTAT.
The ISI has always had a special place. The ISI itself is widely recognized as a highly respected organization of statisticians from all kinds of disciplines. Although not a statistician by profession, I was elected member in the year 2002. As an active member of IAOS, I fulfilled the function of IAOS Vice-President in the years 1999-2001 and coordinated the IAOS programme for the ISI Korea Session.
For the future, I see so many opportunities for the ISI and the Sections to grow and increase their ability to attract new members and make the networks vigorous. I am confident that with the support of the EC, the Council and the Sections, we can make important steps forward. The Session in Durban will offer the possibility to meet many people who are active in the ISI. I am definitely looking forward to all new opportunities and working together with the ISI family.
Ada van Krimpen
Director ISI
Invited Paper Meetings for the 57th ISI Session, Durban, South Africa
- last updated: June 19, 2009
Important Updates:
Please visit the ISI Durban Session website for the IPM schedule:
http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/ScientificProgramme/Ipms.aspx. The list of Short Courses is available at http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/ShortCourses.aspx.
Please see Information Bulletin III: http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/welcome/news.aspx.ISI Durban Session - Administrative Meetings Schedule
Excel file
Call for Proposals – ISI Dublin, August 2011
Invited Paper Meetings
Organizing an Invited Paper Meeting at ISI is a very good way to increase interest in a research area and highlight to a broad audience the opportunities and the research results that are being achieved. In 2011 at the ISI Dublin Session, an aim will be to highlight the contributions that statistics can make to global challenges. To this end, there will be a special ‘Theme Day’ devoted to the topic Water, Quality and Quantity.
Planning of the Scientific Programme for the Dublin Session is ramping up, for the Theme Day and for the rest of the Programme. Invited Paper Meetings will be central to the success of the ISI and the Programme Coordinating Committee (PCC) is looking for proposals for Invited Paper Meetings – for the Theme Day and for the rest of the meeting. Proposals should have been submitted to the Programme Coordinating Committee by Friday, July 24th, 2009.
The Dublin Session will have 70-75 Invited Paper Meetings (IPMs). We anticipate more proposals than this. Proposals will be assessed against the following criteria:
* Is the topic of interest to more than one Section?
* Does the topic link users and developers of new methods?
* Is the topic at the cutting edge of research or application?
* What is the ranking by the Sections of the proposals they are nominating?Special consideration will be given to ensure that the Programme:
* Has a balance of organisers from around the world
* Has a good representation of organisers who are early career statisticians
* Has a good representation of organisers who are female
* Is attractive to the diverse membership of the ISI and its SectionsTraining Courses, Continuing Education and Workshops
ISI provides an opportunity to provide training on specialized topics and to conduct workshops and continuing education on advanced and rapidly changing areas. Many of these will occur with the active cooperation and support of the various ISI Sections and Committees. Expressions of interest are requested from individuals and groups interested in organizing such events in association with the Dublin Session.
Further Information
The website for ISI 2011 (http://www.isi2011.ie/) has further information on the Scientific Programme and the guidelines for proposals and expressions of interest as well as contact information for the Programme Coordinating Committee, including the representatives of the different Sections.
Proposals and Expressions of Interest can be submitted via members of the PCC or through the undersigned at the addresses listed.
Murray Cameron (murray.cameron@csiro.au)
Silvia Regina Costa Lopes (silviarc.lopes@gmail.com)
Co-Chairs, Programme Coordinating Committee
58th ISI World Statistics Congress, Dublin
Report from Meeting of the ISI Executive Committee
The ISI Executive Committee met at the end of April at King’s College London. This note gives a brief summary of the highlights of our discussions. A large part of our discussions concerned the plans for the ISI Session in Durban which I have not repeated here since more up to date information is provided elsewhere in the ISI Newsletter. We also received updates on the plans for Dublin in 2011 and Hong Kong in 2013.
Finances
The financial results for 2008 show a deficit of € 115,000 due to an increase in the staffing costs which total € 500,000. This increase is largely due to the departure of the previous Director, the search for a new Director and the costs of the Interim Director. Despite this deficit it was decided to increase the membership dues by only the cost of living as it was appreciated that the current times are very hard for many members. We had a useful discussion on the ex-officio dues structure and agreed that a review of this is a high priority for the incoming Director of the ISI in consultation with the Finance Committee as well as the IAOS and the ISI Executive Committees. We also considered the fact even though we offer a reduction of 50% of dues to developing country statisticians, this is still very high for many people in the really poor countries of the world. We need to review this together with the definition of developing countries.
Membership
The ISI membership figures show a net loss of 25 members over 2008, with only 11 candidates being nominated for the first round of the 2009 membership elections. It was agreed that I should write to all ISI members urging them to nominate colleagues and other statisticians for membership.
ISI Director
We took the opportunity to thank Wim Senden for his commitment to the post of interim Director of the ISI which continued until 1st June, and we discussed the recruitment of a full time Director (I am sure that you will be pleased to see the report of the appointment of Ada van Krimpen to this position in this ISI Newsletter).
Restructuring
The President-Elect, Jef Teugels, has taken responsibility for moving forward the ideas concerning a new structure for the ISI family and he reported on his progress and opinions. He expressed some concerns about the plans regarding open membership because he felt there are signs that some elected members would not support this change and would see the move from the category of ‘elected members’ to ‘fellows’ as somewhat superficial. He pointed out that 40% of ISI elected members do not sign up for a free Section and we understand very little as to why these members do not see a free section as attractive. Thus his conclusions were that a ‘light’ version of membership in the ISI is needed and the category of elected membership should stay. It was his recommendation that more consultation and debate is needed before we have formal proposals to place before the membership. I expressed my gratitude to Jef Teugels for his commitment to this work.
Council
We are concerned that the current Council does not function optimally because the roles of Council members are not clear. Should the Council be consultative or decision-making? Is the EC considered really part of the Council or mostly operating separately? Council members are sufficiently involved in the ISI partly because the cost of holding a face-to-face Council meeting is expensive. Some attempts have been made to allocate roles to Council members and this could be extended to incorporate roles representing their own regions as well specific responsibilities. This is to be discussed at the forthcoming Council meeting.
Nominations Committee
The Executive Committee agreed that Len Cook should chair the next Nominations Committee to select a slate of candidates for the ISI Executive and Council. Ideas should be sent to him at len_cook@xtra.co.nz
Auditing of Votes
Professor Jelke Bethlehem has audited the votes for the elections to the ISI Executive and Council, a task for which we are very grateful. We thus thanked Jelke for this commitment.
Publications Committee
We received updates from the Vice-President Vijay Nair on the development of the Springer online Encyclopedia and on the search for a new Chief Editor of the ISReview (and I am very pleased to announce that Ali Hadi, Vice Provost and Director of Graduate Studies and Research in The American University in Cairo has accepted this important position). We also discussed how we can make much needed improvements to the ISI Newsletter and website and we look forward to discussions on this in Durban. We also began some early discussions on a proposal for a rapid research communications journal.
Future Sessions
The ISI Executive Committee has been exploring the future of the ISI Sessions under the leadership of Vice-President Stephan Morganthaler. From the Dublin Conference onwards, the Session will officially be called: 58th ISI World Statistics Congress. As a consequence of this there will be other name changes:
Invited Sessions instead of IPM
Contributed Sessions instead of CPM
Special Topic Sessions instead of STCPMStephan has been reviewing the committee structure and will propose some changes to be considered in Durban. The idea of theme day(s) at the Congresses such as the health statistics in Sydney and the day on water statistics planned for Dublin, are seen as exciting. Theme day(s) could be half a day, a full day or could be as a track through all five days. The possibility of named lectures was discussed and it was agreed that we might start modestly with two or three to be organised per World Congress.
The sensitive issue of the host country contributing to the ISI finances was discussed. One possibility would be to use an agreed percentage of the ISI registration fees to create a President’s Fund to be used to invite special speakers and provide proper financial support for key people who would not otherwise get funding to attend a Session. Concerns were expressed about the fact that each host country has to develop an Abstract/Paper management system, and the possibility was again raised that the system should move from one congress organiser to the next. This needs further exploration.
Briefing of Heads of National Statistical Offices
Vice President Len Cook had been allocated responsibility for proposing the future of these briefing sessions. He will prepare a paper for consideration by the Executive Committee and for consultation with other interested parties. His current thinking is that the focus of such briefings could be on top ten most difficult issues for heads of national statistical offices.
Meeting of National Statistical Societies
A meeting of emerging and existing national statistical societies is scheduled to be held in Durban. The idea is that the ISI can act as an umbrella for national statistical societies bringing them together to share experiences and expertise. The Committee for the NSSs has only met at the Sessions with very little activity taking place between Sessions. The ISI Office needs to update its list of national statistical societies and information to assist with this is always welcome and should be sent to Mr. Sieriel Hoesenie: @cbs.nl.
(Submission form for changed data).
Denise Lievesley
President ISI
Awards, Prizes and Competitions
Mahalanobis Prize
Initiated and financially supported by the Government of India, the biennial ‘Mahalanobis Prize’ serves to honour the memory of Professor P.C. Mahalanobis by recognising the lifetime contribution of selected statisticians from developing countries who have earned their reputation in developing countries. Previous winners of this Prize include Prof. C.R. Rao, Prof. Ben Kiregyera and Dr. Isidoro P. David. We are proud to announce that the winner of the fourth edition of the Mahalanobis Prize is Pedro Alberto Morettin from Brazil. We congratulate Professor Morettin on this well deserved recognition, and also thank the Mahalanobis Prize Jury, chaired by Professor Lynne Billard, for their efforts. The Honourable Shri Sriprakash Jaiswal, the Indian Minister of State for Statistics & Programme Implementation, will confer the Mahalanobis Prize upon Professor Morettin in a special ceremony during the ISI General Assembly on 21st August. Please attend the ISI General Assembly and witness this special event!
Pedro Alberto Morettin
Jan Tinbergen PrizeOne of the fundamental objectives of the ISI is to define and institute a constructive role for the ISI in supporting the development of young statisticians. With this in mind, we are delighted to announce the following winners of the ISI Jan Tinbergen Award, named after the famous Dutch econometrician:
* Mr. Pierre Joubert Nguetse Tegoum (Cameroon)
* Mr. Mohammad Arashi (Iran)
* Mr. Sudheesh Kumar Kattumannil (India)In addition to a cash prize, generously provided by the Dutch ‘Stichting Internationaal Statistisch Studiefonds’, these three individuals will receive support to enable their participation at the Lisboa Session and present their winning papers at a special Invited Paper Meeting (IPM 101). We are grateful to the Jan Tinbergen Jury, chaired by Mr. Eric Schulte Nordholt, for their work in selecting the award winners.
The Weldon Memorial Prize for 2008
The Weldon Medal is awarded each year, to perpetuate the name of Walter Frank Raphael Weldon, MA, D.Sc. formerly Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Fellow of Merton College, and to encourage Biometric Science. This year, unusually, it has been awarded to an Oxford scientist.
The Prize has been awarded to Professor Peter Donnelly, FRS FMedSci, Professor of Statistical Science and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford.
Weldon Memorial Prize for 2008 website: http://www.well.ox.ac.uk/news.shtml
News of Members
George G. Roussas, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Davis, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens, and an elected member of the ISI since 1973, was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “for fundamental contributions to the field of statistical inference in stochastic processes, particularly developing Large Sample Theory, and for significant contributions to your university and profession”.
Professor George Roussas
We regret to announce the deaths of the following members
Born Elected Deceased Professor John Hajnal 1924 1961 30 November 2008 Mr. Svein Longva 1943 1993 16 April 2009 Mr. Yury Orlov 1936 1995 18 May 2005 Professor Heihachi Sakamoto 1914 1976 14 April 2004
In Memoriam
Mr. Raymond Lévy-Bruhl
Mr. Raymond Lévy-Bruhl (1922-2008)
A life devoted to statistics, hence to evidence-based policy-making1
1. Living in an Academic Family in difficult times
Grandson of the well-known French philosopher and sociologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939), who often served as a mentor of his growing grand-child. Raymond reached the age of 18 when France was defeated and soon, under German authority, adopted anti-Semitic rules. The family moved to Toulouse, where application of these rules was early more accommodating. At the university Raymond graduated with two diplomas: in law and mathematics. But young men of his age were then assigned to STO (service du travail obligatoire). Under a different assumed name and age, Raymond worked in Auch at the department of civil engineering.From the summer 1944 to the spring 1945, France experienced a return to normal legislation. The Lévy-Bruhl family moved back to Paris and Raymond was engaged in the French army, where he served up to October 1945. He then registered at the University of Paris, where he took higher diplomas in public law and economics. In April 1946 INSEE was instituted and Francis-Louis Closon appointed as its Director General (ISI Newsletter, vol 23, n°1, 1999). Raymond Lévy-Bruhl happened to meet him, as well as the then director, Eugène Morice, of the INSEE School. On the basis of his curriculum vitae and of a law then ruling entry of the young Jews in the French civil service, he was appointed to the staff of INSEE on July 1, 1946. Simultaneously, he was granted a Rockefeller fellowship to be spent for a semester at Columbia University, followed by a quarter at the US Census Bureau. It was then agreed that Raymond Lévy-Bruhl would join, in October 1947, Pierre Thionet (ISI, 1955), who had graduated in mathematics at Ecole Normale Supérieure and was becoming a specialist in statistical sample surveys.
The fall 1947 was also the time when a new academic research unit was created at the Sorbonne2: the VIth Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, a section that would later grow and become the ‘Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. The VIth Section had a chair on ‘Sociology of Law’. From 1950 to 1954 the chair was held by Henry Lévy-Bruhl (1884-1964), an uncle of Raymond, who later had himself much to do with that field when he served as the chief of the statistical division of our Ministry of Labor, from 1951 to 1962.
2. A first phase of activity at INSEE( 1947-1951)
Historians of the French public statistical service know that it belonged to Pierre Thionet and Raymond Lévy-Bruhl to really launch sample surveys at INSEE during the years 1947 to 19513. The most strategic choice was then to opt between the technique of random sampling as against the so called ‘technique of quotas’, which had been chosen for opinion pools, the set of units to be sampled being only requested to meet some preassigned conditions of proportionality to the population to be described4.Experience has shown that the technique of quotas was not reliable, whereas random sampling, rigorously applied on sufficiently large samples, was giving in practice a measurable degree of approximation5.The French mathematicians and probabilists, like Maurice Fréchet and Georges Darmois were, of course, aware of that, as well as such precursor statisticians as Ronald Fisher in England. This being said, in France the random sampling technique had still to be implemented in the context of public statistics.
Leading this operation at INSEE was the main function of the unit led by Thionet and Lévy-Bruhl, later assisted by such younger statisticians as Jacques Desabie. Surveys had to be made on a number of demographic and economic subjects concerning activity of the French population. Random samples had to be drawn from the latest general population census (ran in 1946 or, later, in 1954). An incidental function for statisticians was also to provide relevant information to the people and to a variety of users, particularly those building our system of national accounts. Lévy-Bruhl took a large part in promoting such functions.
A first opportunity was offered when UNESCO opened for three months in Paris (October to December 1949) a ‘Centre Européen d’Application Statistique et Démographique’. Lectures were given not only by Lévy-Bruhl and Thionet, but also by F.Yates, a senior British collaborator of R.Fisher, and by M.Hansen, an American statistician who had co-authored in 1943 an article ‘On the theory of sampling from finite populations’. It is noteworthy that in the mimeographed booklet which was edited by INSEE and distributed to auditors, 69 pages were written by Lévy-Bruhl, out of hardly more than 100 pages.
Later in 1957, an ‘Institut des sciences sociales du travail’ asked Lévy-Bruhl to give a regular main course, a task he performed from to 1958. The Institut is now attached to the University Paris 1. Historians might search whatever archives from that period would be now available.
Foreign readers of this article may not realize the full impact in France of this first period of activity of Lévy-Bruhl and of collages of his age at INSEE6. For several decades we would have many opportunities to hear about this impact from civil servants of our generation referring, for instance, to lectures given by Raymond at the ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration).
3. The second period of activity
The second period of activity of Lévy-Bruhl covered the years 1951 to 1962, when he was heading the statistical division of our Ministry of Labor. In France, like in a number of other countries, labor statistics dated from the late nineteenth century, embedded, as they were, in the administration of labor laws. They had even be improved in the 1930s. The evolution had been temporarily interrupted by the war and German occupation, but was quickly resumed, with even the founding of a statistical survey, called ACEMO (standing for <activité et emploi de la main d’oeuvre>) and of a journal (Revue française du Travail). The scientific guarantee of INSEE had moreover been obtained in 1946 when sharp budgetary cuts had been imposed to all ministries.When Lévy-Bruhl was assigned his new function, at a time of rapid turnover in administrative responsibilities, he made it clear that: first, he meant to stay; second that, remaining officially attached to INSEE, he was not ready to accept more than suggestions from the Minister of Labor; third, that he would reorganized ACEMO, so as to permit quick publication of the results (evolution of the number of employees by type of establishment and industry, of the average duration of work, of the average wage by sex and skill, in each industry and geographical zone); finally that the collection of data would be taken away from the responsibility of ‘inspecteurs du travail’.
Lévy-Bruhl did not write his own biography. Neither was he a man to report at length on his own doughty deeds. However, we have two direct testimonies from him, which are worth reporting here about this second period of his activities. For the Journées d’étude sur l’histoire de la statistique (June 1976), in which most authors were historians writing on former times, he was asked to write an article about his main recollection of the years 1945-19607. About his function at the Ministry of Labor and the survey ACEMO, he had, with INSEE’s agreement, to change the source on wages and salaries, from the reports of local arbitration courts (conseils des prud’hommes) to a direct collection of these data from individual employers. About his association with INSEE, Lévy-Bruhl chose to report the selective governmental manipulation in 1956-57 concerning which consumer prices to take as a reference for the determination of the minimum wage, and how that led INSEE to decide to compute a new consumer price index, on a richer collection of price data, so as to prevent selective manipulation.
The second direct testimony exists in a long and rich interview made of Lévy-Bruhl in 1991 by the ‘Comité pour l’Histoire du Ministère de l’Economie et des Finances’. The general spirit is already conveyed in the concluding paragraph of his 1976 article referred to above. He there wrote:
«What should we conclude from this rapid bird’s eye view of French statistics between 1945 and 1960?
The riches of the following periods should not lead us to forget that important works were then developed. Many of them still stand at the basis of the statistical production of 1976.
Moreover, outside of INSEE, Claude Gruson built up during this period, within the Ministry of Finances, the SEEF (Service for economic and financial studies). The small team of that service took the charge of developing the work on national accounts, which had been initiated after the war by a very small staff built at the ‘Commissariat du Plan’. Elaboration of national accounts and economic budgets, which require a good consistency of statistical sources, was going to reveal deficiencies in the basic statistical information and to make obvious the necessity of improvements which were brought out in the following period».Such is the background against which the third phase of Lévy-Bruhl activity must be seen
4. Being number 2 at INSEE
It was, indeed, a long period, which is naturally divided into three sub-periods.4.1 Coordinating new developments (1962-66)
When, in the fall 1961, Claude Gruson was called to replace Francis-Louis Closon, a reorganization between SEEF and INSEE was clearly needed, implying that the bulk of the task of establishing the national accounts be transferred to INSEE, which was accumulating experience on objective collection of data and on precise determination of economic aggregates. Gruson naturally felt attached to his team and had no objection to the transfer, quite the contrary because he realized that participation of INSEE staff had been useful in economic analysis and economic budgeting. Neither did entry of national accountants in INSEE raise objections. Moreover, Raymond Lévy-Bruhl had served in 1961 as a good ‘rapporteur’ of the ‘Commission de la main d’oeuvre’ of the Fourth French Plan. Gruson then thought that Lévy-Bruhl could be replaced as heading the statistical division of the Ministry of Labor and should come close to him as coordinator of the reorganization.This turned out to have been an excellent idea, since Raymond was easily accepted as de facto Number 2 within INSEE, being in charge also of administrative and some other matters of general interest. Gruson could so even succeed in further substantially increasing INSEE staff during the following four years, and in appointing Raymond as his ‘Chef de cabinet’ before being himself replaced.
4.2 Heading the staff of the General Director (1967-71)
When he was appointed General Director of INSEE, Jean Ripert understood that his main task was to raise the productivity of the Institute. Indeed, he coined the following motto for INSEE: ‘to organize itself so as to be ever more useful’. and he called on the consultant firm Mac Kinsey, giving it the target to survey the inner organization of INSEE and to make such proposals which could be discussed and implemented by 1971.Simultaneously, realization of projects which had matured within INSEE during the preceding years and had been followed by Lévy-Bruhl went on. Some projects directly concerned the Institute as a producer and distributor of statistics, like the development of electronic tools, or of a rich system of surveys. Others concerned it as a coordinator of the various units making up the whole French statistical system, like creation and upkeep of registers of firms and establishments or publications such as ‘Economie et Statistique’ and ‘Le courrier des statistiques’, or still institution of the ‘Conseil National de la Statistique’ and the ‘Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés’.
Clearly, many were involved in the array of problems and decisions that INSEE had thus to master in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But Lévy-Bruhl had clearly to examine them and expose them for decision of the General Director.
4.3 General Secretary of INSEE(1972- 89)
This was so much so that Ripert decided in 1972 to make this function explicit and to create the General Secretariat of INSEE under the authority of Lévy-Bruhl. It would be too long to expose here now at length how Raymond Lévy-Bruhl practised that responsibility up to his retirement, then serving with three General Directors in succession (Ripert, myself, Jean-Claude Milleron). I shall then finish this essay with just few comments.
All along Lévy-Bruhl was recognized as a statistician with high morals and competence, who greatly contributed to the consolidation and independence of INSEE, hence also to the quality of the public service in his country.
The International Statistical Institute is indebted to Lévy-Bruhl because of the care with which he organized in Paris in 1989 its 47th Session8 He became an elected ISI member in 1979.When retiring, Raymond also took great care to leave clean archives for his successors, as well as oral explanations to his immediate successor, Gérard Maarek.
Edmond Malinvaud
1 See also ‘In Memoriam’ published in French by A. Desrosières et Béatrice Touchelay in Courrier des Statistiques, Mai-Octobre 2008.
2 See Une Ecole pour les Sciences Sociales, Editions du Cerf, Paris 1966, p.145-165 and p. 511.
3 See Jacques Antoine, Histoire des sondages, Odile Jacob, Paris 2005, p. 68.
4 The first chapter of Antoine’s book has the title ‘prehistory and origin of sample surveys’. It concludes that, when sample surveys were introduced in central Europe, the corpus of the doctrine and methods was already known and prowled thanks to American experience. In simple words, what Europeans found and applied in the 1950s and 1960s matched with what had been experimented in the 1930s, and even sometimes earlier. That chapter recalls the dominant role of the International Statistical Institute and its sessions since 1895.In 1903 a resolution drew attention to the considerable advantage to be found in applying ‘the representative method‘. In 1925 another resolution put, on the same level, two methods to ensure representativity: the sample may either be randomly chosen (with equal p^robabilities) or be ‘judiciously’ chosen, ‘the units being distributed in groups according to such choice that these groups present, in total, about the same characterstics as the whole’. The resolution states additional recommendations about the control of representativity, calculation of accuracy and, in any case, publication of a detailed account of the selection procedures.The chapter also points to the fact that Jersey Neymann published in 1934 in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, an important article ‘On the two different aspects of the representative method: stratified sampling or purposive selection’; The article was read as a full validation of stratified sampling. However, Antoine’s prehistory also stresses the roles of psychologists and sociologists, as well as of opinion polls and market studies.
5 The literature on this question was then quickly substantial, with some ‘Etudes théoriques’ written by Thionet, and a chapter on ‘Random Sampling in M.G. Kendall, The Advance Theory of Statistics, Volume 1, Fourth edition, Griffin and Co, London, 1948.
6 The background and emergence of this period are well described in F. Penissat et B. Touchelay, Les statistiques du travail en Revue (1906-1950), 16 pages, Mars 2008.
7 Pour une histoire de la statistique, Tome 1, pages 559-64, INSEE 1977 and Economica/INSEE 1987.
8 INSEE had already been involved in organizing in Reims in 1978 the 11th general conference of the International Association of Regional and Urban Statisticians.
Philippe Nasse
Philippe Nasse (1939-2008)
Philippe Nasse passed away on November 26, 2008. He was 69 years old and an ISI elected member since 1994. He belonged to this very special kind of statisticians who are at the same time economists and econometricians, with a very solid theoretical knowledge allied to a strong practical capacity for analysing facts and an extraordinary pedagogic ability, whatever were his public, students, colleagues, experts, and politicians. Thanks to his various talents, he was able to fulfil different roles during his career: statistician and econometrician, researcher, economic adviser in the ministry of economic and finance, manager of statistical schools and teacher, magistrate in the Court of Accounts.
He started to work as a researcher at the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE, the French central statistical office) in 1964 and got a Ph.D. in economic mathematics and econometrics three years later, in 1967, after having developed an econometric model for analysing household consumption. At the beginning of the 1970s, a number of countries tried to complete yearly national accounts with quarterly accounts: Philippe Nasse proposed a very original approach by elaborating an econometric model using current short term data, which was very innovating compared to the methods used by other countries. He had to supervise the implementation of his proposals when he became head of the national quarterly accounts division in 1975, then head of the economic forecasts department in 1978. His remarkable capacity to build practical and operational tools based on a sound theoretical background is certainly one of the various Philippe Nasse’s talents.
In 1982, he was called to work in the directorate of the Ministry of Economic and Finance in charge of macroeconomic forecasting and economic analysis. He spent six years in this directorate where he was a member of the staff of economic advisers, successively as the responsible of international affairs, head of the department of economic forecasting, and finally deputy director.
He came back to INSEE in 1988 as a member of the Resarch Department at INSEE, then, in 1990, he was appointed as the managing director of the Paris based School of Statistics and Economic Administration (ENSAE). He was at the origin of an important and sagacious reform of this school that is now one of the most known French institutions in its domain and established links with its best foreign counterparts like the London School of Economics. He was also at the origin of the creation of a second school within the same group dedicated to the statistical engineering. In fact, Philippe Nasse was always attracted by pedagogic activities and teaching; he was for instance professor at the economic department of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique from 1974 to 1988. He also established strong links between these school and research activities, and chaired after 2004 the Council for Research activities within the INSEE.
In 1994, he was called once again to work in the directorate of macroeconomic forecasting and economic analysis as its director. He was at that time one of the main economic advisers of three successive ministers. After the legislative elections of 1997 won by the socialist party, the new government asked to Philippe Nasse to produce a report on the state of the French economy, which he made in a total spirit of independence and professionalism, so much so that, five years after, when the socialist party was defeated, the same task was asked to Philippe Nasse by a government having totally different political views.
In 1997, he knew a last change in his professional activities by being appointed as a magistrate in the Court of Accounts. In this capacity, he was also appointed as a member of the French competition regulatory authority (the Competition Council), the vice-chairman of which he was since 2001.
His statistical career was certainly very specific but he was nevertheless happy with his election as an ISI member and he maintained his membership even during the last phase of his professional life when his activities were farer from statistics. I had the privilege to meet at several times Philippe during the recent past years since we both participate in an Economic and Financial Franco-Vietnamese Forum. His pedagogic capacities and his ability to make accurate and pertinent analysis of the Vietnamese economy were very much appraised.It is a chance for the ISI to recruit members having the same kind of vision as Philippe Nasse.
Jean-Louis Bodin
ISI Committee Matters: ISI Committee for the Strengthening
of Cooperation between the ISI and Statistical Societies
The main objective of this committee is to undertake cooperative activities and to develop systems for mutual support amongst the ISI and other statistical societies. At the recent Executive Board, we agreed that the ISI should pay more attention to the potential benefits of forging stronger relations between the ISI and NSSs.
At each ISI biennial Session, representatives of regional and national statistical societies have met to exchange information about their recent activities. Although these meetings have been very lively, it is regrettable that the committee has not been active between Sessions. So in Durban, we shall be meeting to consider how we might develop and sustain cooperative arrangements amongst statistical societies. In particular, we shall consider the possible establishment of an International Federation of National Statistical Societies. The purpose of such a networked organisation would be to share knowledge and experience amongst member bodies, encourage education in Statistics, advance international cooperation and promote the discipline of Statistics.
We are especially keen to examine how we might support the establishment of new statistical societies, particularly in poorer countries. Another priority is to exchange experiences amongst societies concerning the involvement of young statisticians.We welcome your views about the role that the ISI might play in furthering the concept of an international network of statistical societies. Please feel free to e-mail me at d.lievesley@uclmail.net.
Denise Lievesley
President ISI
ISI Officers’ Elections Results
We would like to thank our members for voting and Professor Jelke Bethlehem for auditing the votes. A total of 581 ballots regarding ISI Officers resulted in the election of the following persons:
President-Elect (2009-2011)
Jae Chang Lee (Korea)Vice-Presidents (2009-2011)
Louis H.Y. Chen (Singapore)
Vijayan N. Nair (Malaysia/USA)
Hallgrímur Snorrason (Iceland)Council (2009-2013)
Bovas Abraham (Canada)
Martha B. Aliaga (USA)
A. John Bailer (USA)
Marie Husková (Czech Republic)
Jens Ledet Jensen (Denmark)
Geoffrey F. Lee (Australia)
Awa Thiongane (Senegal)
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (Italy)Present Council members who will be continuing their service for a further two years (2009-2011) are:
Jaromír Antoch (Czech Republic)
Carolee Bush (USA)
Alicia L. Carriquiry (Uruguay)
Tim Dunne (South Africa)
Ursula Gather (Germany)
Mathisca de Gunst (The Netherlands)
Genshiro Kitigawa (Japan)
Jung Jin Lee (Korea)The formal approval of the election results is due to occur during the Durban Session by the ISI General Assembly, which is scheduled for 21st August 2009. We are grateful to all candidates for their enthusiasm and willingness to support the ISI. The newly elected team, under the leadership of incoming President Jef Teugels, will start its work at the completion of the ISI Durban Session on 22nd August 2009.
ISI Executive Committee (2009-2011)
President
President-elect
Jef L. Teugels
(Belgium)
Jae Chang Lee
(Korea)
Vice-Presidents
Louis H.Y. Chen
(Singapore)Vijayan N. Nair
(Malaysia/USA)Hallgrímur Snorrason
(Iceland)Newly Elected Council (2009-2013)
Marie Husková
(Czech Republic)Martha B. Aliaga
(Argentina/USA)A. John Bailer
(USA)Bovas Abraham
(Canada)
Jens Ledet Jensen
(Denmark)Geoffrey F. Lee
(Australia)Awa Thiongane
(Senegal)Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
(Italy)
Dhaka Hosts International Statistics Conference
Some participants of the conference (from left) A.K.Md. Ehsanes Saleh (Canada), M Obaidullah (Bangladesh), Shahjahan Khan (Australia), Munir Ahmad (Pakistan), Abdunanabi Ali (Libya), and Emad-Eldin Aly (Kuwait)
The North South University (NSU), Bangladesh, and Carleton University, Canada, jointly organized an International Conference on ‘Recent Development in Statistical Sciences’ at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh during 26-27 December 2008. The Conference honoured A.K.Md. Ehsanes Saleh, Distinguished Research Professor & Professor Emeritus, Carleton University, in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the development of Statistical sciences through his pioneering research, outstanding supervision of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, and exceptional professional services via organizing international symposia, as well as editing special volumes, books and journals over the last four decades. Professor Saleh is a Fellow of the ASA, IMS, RSS and Bangladesh Academy of Science; an elected member of the ISI; and an honourary member of the Statistical Society of Canada.
The Governor of Bangladesh Bank (Central Bank), Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed (chief guest); President of Bangladesh Academy of Science, Professor M. Shamsher Ali (special guest) and Chair of Board of Governors of NSU, Mr Abdul Awal spoke in the inaugural session and welcomed and thanked Professor Saleh for participating in the conference. The Chair of the Steering Committee and Vice Chancellor of NSU, Professor Hafiz G A Siddiqi; Chair, International Scientific Committee, Dr Shahjahan Khan from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia; and Chair, Executive Committee, Dr Abdul Hannan Chowdhury of NSU welcomed the international and local participants of the conference. Before Professor Saleh welcomed all the participants, a video snippet on his career was shown to the audience. At the concluding part of the inaugural session, Dr Salehuddin Ahmed presented a crest of honor to Professor Saleh while his wife Shahidara Saleh and grand daughter Sarah Alam watched it with pride from among the audience.
The conference presentations covered many areas of current Statistical research and applications such as statistical inference, distribution theory, probability models, stochastic process, survival analysis, biostatistics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, reliability theory, quality control, sampling methods, statistical computing, Bayesian analysis, time series, econometrics, demography, robust methods, Monte-Carlo methods, statistical education, financial mathematics, forecasting, actuarial science, environmental statistics, economic statistics, official statistics, multivariate analysis, operations research, spatial analysis etc.
Out of over 120 papers, 85 were accepted for presentation in the conference. About 200 delegates from 15 different countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Kuwait, Pakistan, Libya, Singapore, UK, and USA participated in the conference. Most of the contributed papers were presented by young academics and researchers from various public and private Universities in Bangladesh. The proceedings of the conference have been published. Some selected papers presented in the conference would be considered for publication in the Journal of Applied Probability and Statistics (JAPS) after peer-review.
The event received significant attention from the local printed and electronic media in spite of prescheduled national election on 29 December 2008. A full-page coverage of the conference was published in a national daily, the News Today on 26 December, highlighting the importance of the event and its scientific and national benefits. The wide ranging role and applications of Statistics in many different aspects of life were focused in a popular article on “Statistics: From Data to Decision and Development” published in the News Today as well as in the conference booklet. Several national dailies also published pre and post event news on the conference. Some TV channels also covered the news.
The closing session of the conference was held in the Sarina Hotel with Bangladesh-style dinner for the participants and guests. The chief guest of the session, Professor Nazrul Islam, Chairman of University Grants Commission, provided some statistics on the current state of the higher education sector in Bangladesh. He also shared his memories with Professor Saleh while both were PhD students at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Professor Munir Ahmed, founding President of ISOSS, spoke in the session on behalf of the international participants.
The conference paid deepest respect to late National Professor Qazi Motahar Hosain and Shaheed Professor Moniruzzaman for introducing the discipline of Statistics in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the early fifties. Other pioneering Bangladeshi Statisticians who participated and was recognized in the conference are M Obaidullah, M G Mustafa, Anwar H Talukder, Kazi S Ahmed, and Sultan Ahmed.
Shahjahan Khan
Chair of International Scientific Committee
President of ISOSS
Department of Mathematics & Computing
University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
Historical Anniversaries: William Playfair
William Playfair was born near Dundee, Scotland, on September 22, 1759. The fifth of eight children and the youngest son of Reverend James Playfair, minister of the parish of Liff and Bevie, he lost his father in 1772 and was looked after by his eldest brother, John Playfair, who was later to become professor of mathematics, then professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.
After completing his formal education, he worked as an apprentice at the Houston Mill of the Phantassie estate, near East Linton, under Andrew Meikle, the inventor of the threshing machine. Thereafter, Playfair was taken on by the steam engine manufactory of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, where he became a personal assistant to James Watt, preparing and copying drawings of steam engines for several years. During this period, Playfair was acquainted with the members of the Lunar Society, including Joseph Priestley who had proposed in 1765, with some success, a timeline chart that used individual bars to compare the life spans of persons.
Playfair left Boulton and Watt in 1782 and, with William Wilson, a co-worker, set themselves up as silversmiths and plate-makers in Marylebone, Middlesex. They opened a shop in London but this first attempt soon failed. This experience was the first element of an often-to-be-repeated pattern of enthusiastic projects, conflicts with associated people and ultimate failure.In 1785, Playfair started to write about economics with a book devoted to the Regulation of the Interest of Money, inaugurating a set of books and pamphlets including one of the first critical editions (1805) of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
In 1786, he published a study devoted to an examination of English trade during the eighteenth century entitled Commercial and Political Atlas. One of the peculiarities of this book is of statistical essence: it contains statistical charts. In this Atlas (which contains no maps as opposed to the familiar geographical atlas!) Playfair used a series of 34 plates about the import and export from different countries over the years, which he presents as shaded or tinted line graphs or surface charts. Because he lacked the similar series data for Scotland, he graphed its trade data for a single year as a series of 34 bars, inspired by the timelines of Priestley: this first bar chart gives a representation of Scotland’s imports and exports from and to 17 countries in 1781 and is considered as a particuliar solution to the problem of discrete quantitative comparison. It is a wonder that the graphs in the Atlas differ little from those proposed nowadays (shading, colour coding, grids, labels…).During the ten years which followed his appointment by Boulton and Watt, Playfair gave proof of his capacities with various activities. For example after the discovery of the French telegraph, he adapted this innovation to British use by introducing an alphabet of his invention. He also received no less than five patents for new inventions. But Playfair noticed that these activities did not bring him fortune and reputation, perhaps because the English industry and commerce were too prosperous to give him the fame he wanted. He believed that he could obtain more profit in a France striving to industrialize.
Hoping in this way to obtain better results in another economic context, Playfair moved to Paris in 1787 where he intended to establish a rolling-mill in the style of Boulton and Watt. Although Louis XVI himself approved the plan, he met failure once again and decided to abandon engineering for the world of enterprise.
An interesting episode of his life in Paris concerns his partnership with Joël Barlow, Parisian representative of the American Scioto Land Company. Their purpose was to establish a colony of French people on the Ohio River among whom one would find distinguished participants to the American War of Independence. On the other hand, while living in the Saint Antoine quarter of Paris, in 1789 Playfair assisted in the capture of the Bastille. But on account of mismanagement and embezzlement, he left Paris for Frankfurt and returned to London in 1793 where he opened a “security bank”, the activities of which were making him liable to prosecution by the Bank of England. He also co-edited a daily paper, The Tomahawk, and a weekly one, Anticipation, which was not published for very long.
During this period, Playfair published several tracts including graphs: Lineal Arithmetic (1798), Statistical Breviary (1801) in which he introduced the circle diagram as well as the pie chart, Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations (1805) and also British Family Antiquity in 9 volumes (1809-1811) which contained illustrations and chronological graphs.After a brief and unsuccessful return to France after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Playfair moved back to London where he died in poverty on February 11, 1823 at Covent Garden.
One of his children, Andrew William, emigrated to Canada where he became successful in private business, founding the town of Playfairville, not far from Ottawa.
His biographers have emphasized that Playfair was, in turn, millwright, engineer, draftsman, accountant, inventor, silversmith, merchant, investment broker, economist, pamphleteer, translator, publicist, land speculator, convict, banker, ardent royalist, journalist, editor and blackmailer but we prefer to recall here that he was also a statistician who, against the tradition of graphical representation, allowed to understand that a graph can help a user of statistics in his studies.Jean-Jacques Droesbeke
Chairman
Christiaan Huygens Committee on the History of Statistics
Memories of the ISI’s Past
Participants registering at the 36th ISI Session in Sydney in 1967
The International Conference Centre’s front façade in the Durban night sky.
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News from ISI Sections Volume 33, No. 2 (98) 2009
