Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was born into an intellectual household and received his early schooling in Kolkata. He gradually moved to England for higher studies in physics and mathematics at the University of Cambridge after graduating with physics at Presidency College in Calcutta in 1912. One of Mahalanobis’ professors exposed him to stats shortly before graduating from university in 1915. He obtained a temporary job teaching physicists at Presidency College when he arrived, but he became a research professor there in 1922. On the other hand, his interest in statistics had developed into a severe university subject, and he adapted statistical approaches to anthropological, meteorological, and biological problems. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute at Calcutta on December 17, 1931.

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Achievements

• From 1947 to 1951, he was the chairperson of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Sampling, and in 1949, he was designated as India’s honorary statistical adviser
• In 1968, he was awarded the Srinivasa Ramanujan Gold Medal
• In 1968, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, one of India’s highest honours, for his groundbreaking work
• In 2006, India’s government officially announced his birthdate, June 29, as “National Statistics Day.”
• In honour of his 125th birthday, Indian Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu distributed a commemorative coin during an ISI event in Kolkata on June 29, 2018
• In 1950, he was the President of the Indian Science Congress

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Contributions

• Mahalanobis founded the National Sample Survey in 1950 to provide complete socioeconomic data and the Central Statistical Organisation to organise statistical operations in India
• He developed new methods for performing massive sample studies, and then using the random sampling approach, he determined acreages & crop yields. He proposed the notion of pilot studies and argued that sample approaches are helpful. Average spending, beverage habits, popular sentiment, crop area, and plant disease were among the issues included in early surveys, which took place between 1937 and 1944
• The Mahalanobis distance is a measure of comparison between two data sets created by Mahalanobis. The Mahalanobis distance is among the most extensively used criteria for determining how far a point deviates from a distribution when many dimensions are measured. In the subject of cluster classification and prediction, it is commonly employed. Mahalanobis introduced it in 1930 as part of his research on racial resemblance
• He also used statistics in flood management and economic planning.
• From 1955 until 1967, he was a part of India’s Planning Commission. The Second Five-Year Plan of the Planning Commission promoted heavy industrial growth in India. It depended on Mahalanobis’ statistical depiction of the Indian economy, which became famous as the Mahalanobis model
• He developed fractal graphs and charts, a statistical tool for comparing the socioeconomic circumstances of various kinds of people
• On his 125th anniversary, June 29, 2018, Mahalanobis was celebrated with a Google animation.

Indian Statistical Institute

Many more of Mahalanobis’ colleagues were interested in stats. At the Presidency College in Calcutta, an unofficial group was formed in the Statistical Lab, housed in his apartment. Mahalanobis held meetings with Pramatha Nath Banerji, Nikhil Ranjan Sen, & Sir R. N. Mukherji on December 17, 1931. They founded the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) at Baranagar, formally incorporated as a non-profit learning society on April 28, 1932.

Conclusion

Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis is India’s “Father of Statistics.” By education, he was indeed a physicist; by intuition, he was a statistician; and by belief, he was a strategist. On the academic front, he contributed significantly as the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, the organiser of Indian statistical systems, an innovator in applying statistical methods to practical issues, and the designer of India’s Second Five-Year Plan, among other things. Before the 1920s, statistics analysis was a relatively unknown topic in India. Creating statistics was like venturing into unfamiliar terrain. With his unwavering courage and determination, it took a trailblazer and an explorer-like him to overcome all obstacles, eliminate all impediments, and open up vast pastures of new information for the masses.