[Winter 1999
Colloquiums]
[Department Homepage]
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
OAKLAND UNIVERSITY
ROCHESTER, MICHIGAN 48309
C.R. Rao, FRS
Eberly Professor of Statistics
Pennsylvania State University
Statistics: A Technology for the Millennium
Abstract
A distinction is drawn between statistics and basic subjects like mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. Although statistics has a long antiquity, it has been brought into academia only in the second quarter of the present century. During the last seventy-five years statistics has developed as a powerful blend of science, technology and logic, making it an inevitable instrument in all investigations, scientific or otherwise. Some examples will be given of the use of statistics in scientific research, economic development through optimum use of resources, improvement in industrial productivity, and optimum decision making at individual and institutional levels.
What is the future of statistics in the coming millennium dominated by information technology encompassing the whole of communications, interactions with intelligent systems, massive databases and complex information processing networks? The desired course of future developments in statistics will be presented.
A Short Biographical Sketch of C.R. Rao
Dr. C.R. Rao started his career as a statistician in 1941 at the Indian Statistical Institute founded by Professor P.C. Mahalanobis, where he established the famous Research and Training School which produced a number of outstanding mathematicians, probabilitists and statisticians and won international recognition. He succeeded Professor Mahalanobis as the Director and Secretary of the ISI. After retirement from the ISI, he continued his association with the Institute as Jawaharlal Nehru Professor and later as National Professor, a prestigious professorship awarded by the government of India to not more than 12 outstanding scientists in all disciplines at any time.
Dr. Rao received his Ph.D. and Sc.D. from the Cambridge University in the U.K., and was awarded twenty-two Honorary Doctorate degrees from universities in fifteen different countries around the world.
He is the author of 14 books and 300 research publications in statistics. Several of his results in statistics bear his name and are incorporated in modern textbooks on statistics, for example, the Cramer-Rao inequality, the Rao-Blackwell Theorem, the Fisher-Rao Theorem, Rao's Score Statistic and the Neyman-Rao test, Rao's orthogonal arrays and Haming-Rao bound, Rao distance, Rao's F-statistic, Rao's paradoxes in multivariate analysis and finite sample theory, Rao's quadratic entropy, the Kagan-Linnik-Rao Theorem, and the Lau-Rao-Shanbhag Theorem.
In a review of C.R. Rao's book, Linear Statistical Inference and its Applications, in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, the famous statistician W.G. Cochran stated:
C.R. Rao would be found in almost any statistician's list of five outstanding workers in the world of Mathematical Statistics today. His book represents a comprehensive account of the main body of results that comprise modern statistical theory.
For his academic achievements, Dr. Rao received numerous awards. He has been made a Fellow of Royal Society (U.K. Academy of Sciences), a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.
He has been the President of the International Statistical Institute, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, USA, The International Biometric Society, the Indian Econometric Society and the Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics.
He is an Honorary Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Royal Statistical Society, U.K., The Finnish Statistical Society, and the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications, and Honorary Member of the International Statistical Institute, The International Biometric Society, The American Statistical Association and The Calcutta Statistical Association.
372 Science and Engineering Building
Tuesday, March 30, 1999
3:004:00 P.M.
Refreshments at 2:303:00 PM in Room 368, Science and Engineering Building