k c chakrabarty : uses and misuses of statistics address by dr k c chakrabarty, deputy governor of the reserve bank of india, at the dst centre for interdisciplinary mathematical sciences, faculty of science, banaras hindu university, as part of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of mahanama pandit madan mohan malviya, varanasi, 20 march 2012. * * * assistance provided by shri abhiman das in preparation of this address is gratefully acknowledged. 1. prof. umesh singh, coordinator, dst centre for interdisciplinary mathematical sciences, prof sengupta, dean faculty of science, prof joshi, other distinguished members of faculty of the university, and above all, dear students. i thank you all for inviting me to be in your midst during the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of mahamana pandit madan mohan malviya. it is a great honour and privilege for me. pandit madan mohan malviya 2. you have provided an opportunity to me to pay my tribute to the “ mahamana ” by delivering a lecture as part of the celebrations of his 150th birth anniversary. he was one of the greatest personalities that this nation has ever produced. in many senses, he was what most of the top class institutions today vie to produce. he was, at the same time a great patriot, an eminent educationist, a teacher of teachers, a silver - tongued transcendental orator, an ancient as well as a modern leader, a reluctant but an eminent lawyer, a social reformer, a great human being, a torch - bearer of the downtrodden, and above all, a great nation builder. he lived his life for us and for the future generations. each and every alumnus of bhu will remain ever grateful to him for having created this university, a capital of all discipline. my association with bhu 3. of course, some of you know of my association with this esteemed university and the city of varanasi. i stayed in this city from my early childhood, did my schooling here and then joined the bhu for my graduation and post graduation. then, i became a lecturer here while i pursued my ph. d. i taught here for about 5 years and regard that time as one of the best periods of my life. though my career progression in the banking system including joining the rbi was not as a statistician, i must confess that the analytical ability and articulation

.. ” but surprisingly, he accepted the chance behaviour of molecules suggested by s. n. bose, which resulted in the bose - einstein theory. the inherent nature of uncertainties was initially less understood. although there are uncertainties at the individual level, very few realised a certain amount of stability in the average of a mass of individuals. this is what we call as “ order in disorder ”, or more technically “ statistical regularity ”, which paved the way for formulation of law of large numbers in statistics. discipline of statistics : ancient roots 8. statistics as subject of collection and use of various kinds of statistics can be traced much earlier in india. kautilya ’ s arthasastra ( 321 – 296b. c. ), one of the greatest treatise of economics, indicates a system of census and data collection relating to agriculture, population and other economic activities, covering villages and towns. in addition, the concept of cross - checking and validation by independent agents was very much part of the data collection system. evidences in the writings of huen tsang of seventh to early eighth century and ain - i - akbari by abul fazal show enough empirical basis for handling administration and politics. essentially, the basic statistical system remains with the government. modern statistical information system was developed by the british with the objective of collecting taxes and does not meet with the developmental and administrative needs of the society to a large extent. the commercial and business information system were developed primarily for accountants and does not serve the purpose of management. hence, the statistical system has to reorient to meet the developmental, administrative and management needs of the society. practitioners of statistics have to play an important role in achieving this objective. statistics pervades our daily lives 9. we all live with statistics. starting from the morning newspapers to the evening tv reports, we are surrounded by various statistical figures. we often come across data about out economy : india ’ s population rose to 1. 21 billion people over the last 10 years, an increase by 181 million, according to the census 2011 ; india ’ s gdp increased by 8. 5 % in 2010 – 11 ; inflation was about 7 % in february this year. deposits of scheduled commercial banks was up by 14. 6 % in february, 2012 over a year ago. how are these numbers generated? all these figures are themselves part of statistical measurement. there are elaborate statistical systems to collect detailed data and compile them to generate the aggregate numbers. bis central