Bulletin Number One 1983

A. Besides Britain, there are the United States, India and Australia. In the United States, the applications of Statistics in industries, commerce and administration have been very widespread. In certain areas, she can be said to have surpassed Britain. As for India and Australia, because they were once closely associated with the British rule, they have been very much under the influence of Britain, which has helped them to train many statisticians. Sir R.A. Fisher, for example, went to India very regularly in the later years of his life. It may be said that many Indian statisticians were directly or indirectly his students. Now, the Indian Statistical Institute (isi) is world-famous, and the number of Indian statisticians working outside the country may be even greater than that staying behind. Q. What about other European and Asian countries ？ A. In Europe, there is an interesting phenomenon: Statistics in France and the U.S.S.R. is comparatively less well-developed, although their work on probability theory is very advanced. It would be interesting to find out whether nationa l temperament has anything to do with this, apart from social factors. The first authoritative textbook on Statistics was written during the Second World War by Professor H. Cramer of the University of Stockholm, who is still living. From the vantage point of living in Northern Europe, Professor Cramer combined the developments in probability theory in France and the U.S.S.R. and those in statistical theories in Britain in his Mathematical Methods of Statistics, for a long time internationally recognized as the most systematic textbook on the subject. The neighbouring Denmark has a very strong Statistical Research Institute led by the famous Barndorff-Nielsen. Eastern European countries are late starters in Statistics. But as they have always been strong in Mathematics, we could expect them t o catch up with the others before long. As for Western Europe, France, Germany and Holland have already started their systematic development of Statistics. In Asia, Japan is coming up, although I understand that Japanese universities do not have independent Statistics departments. During the Second World War, a logistics unit which later became the Institute of Statistical Mathematics was set up under the Ministry of Education. After the war, her rapid industrial development necessitated more advanced statistical studies. There are now many statisticians at the University of Tokyo, the University of Osaka, etc., and a new generation of statisticians is emerging. Besides ， a national statistical conference is held in Japan every year. Q. Could you also tell us something about China's statistical studies? A. China was not late in her development of Statistics. Professor Hsu Pao-lu, who did much work in laying the foundation of Chinese Statistics, made important contributions to Statistics when he was a student in Britain. He had been teaching at the University of Peking since his return t o China in the late 40s and many of today's experienced statisticians were his students. Dr. N.N. Chan of our Department was one of them. Professor Hsu has passed away, but the fruits of his research remain. His research on multivariate analysis i s particularly outstanding and one of his papers is still an authoritative work on the topic. In my opinion, there is an urgent need for China to put more emphasis on developing Statistics as the number of statisticians in the country at the moment falls far short of demand. In fact ， Statistics can do a lot for China: both money and material resources can be saved when it is applied to budgeting, decision-making and overall planning. At present, it appears that some mid-level specialist schools in China are teaching Demography, but this subject is not really in the main stream of Statistics. As for universities, it seems that there are still no independent Statistics departments. It is heartening, however, to know that in some universities, where the urgency of establishing Statistics departments has been recognized, preparatory work is already under way. Perhaps, we, statisticians in Hong Kong, may have the opportunity to offer some help or advice in the near future. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 19