Indian Statistical Institute


The Indian Statistical Institute is a public research university headquartered in Kolkata, India with centers in Chennai, Bengaluru, New Delhi and Tezpur. It was declared an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India under the Indian Statistical Institute Act, 1959. Established in 1931, it functions under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of the Government of India.
Primary activities of ISI are research and training in statistics, development of theoretical statistics and its applications in various natural and social sciences. Key areas of research at ISI are statistics, mathematics, theoretical computer science, information science and mathematical economics.
Apart from the degree courses, ISI offers a few diploma and certificate courses, special diploma courses for international students via ISEC, and special courses in collaboration with CSO for training probationary officers of Indian Statistical Service.

History

ISI's origin can be traced back to the Statistical Laboratory in Presidency College, Kolkata, set up by Mahalanobis, who worked in the Physics Department of the college in the 1920s. During 1913–1915, he did his Tripos in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Cambridge, where he came across Biometrika, a journal of statistics founded by Karl Pearson. Since 1915, he taught physics at Presidency College, but his interest in statistics grew under the guidance of polymath Brajendranath Seal. Many colleagues of Mahalanobis took an interest in statistics and the group grew in the Statistical Laboratory. Considering the extensive application of statistics in solving various problems in real life such as analyzing multivariate anthropometric data, applying sample surveys as a method of data collection, analyzing meteorological data, estimating crop yield etc., this group, particularly, Mahalanobis and his younger colleagues S. S. Bose and H. C. Sinha felt the necessity of forming a specialized institute to facilitate research and learning of statistics.
On 17 December 1931, Mahalonobis held a meeting with Pramatha Nath Banerji, Nikhil Ranjan Sen and Sir Rajendra Nath Mookerjee. This meeting led to the establishment of the Indian Statistical Institute, which was formally registered on 28 April 1932, as a non-profit distributing learned society under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860. Later, the institute was registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act XXVI of 1961, amended in 1964. Mukherjee accepted the role of the president of ISI and held this position until his death in 1936. In 1953, ISI was relocated to a property owned by Professor Mahalanobis, named "Amrapali", in Baranagar, which is now a municipality at the northern outskirts of Kolkata.
In 1931, Mahalanobis was the only person working at ISI, and he managed it with an annual expenditure of Rs. 250. It gradually grew with the pioneering work of a group of his colleagues including S. S. Bose, Samarendra Kumar Mitra, J. M. Sengupta, Raj Chandra Bose, Samarendra Nath Roy, K. R. Nair, R. R. Bahadur, Gopinath Kallianpur, D. B. Lahiri, and Anil Kumar Gain. Pitamber Pant, who had received training in statistics at the institute, went on to become a secretary to the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and was a great source of help and support to the institute.
The institute started a training section in 1938. In due course, many of the early workers left the ISI for careers in the United States or for positions in the public and private sectors in India. By the 1940s, the ISI was internationally known and was taken as a model when the first institute of statistics was set up in the United States by Gertrude Coxperhaps the only time an institute in a developing country was used as a model in a developed country.
As asked by the government of India, in 1950, ISI designed and planned a comprehensive socio–economic national sample survey covering rural India. The organisation named National Sample Survey was founded in 1950 for conducting this survey. The field work was performed by the Directorate of NSS, functioning under the Ministry of Finance, whereas the other tasks such as planning of the survey, training of field workers, review, data processing and tabulation were executed by ISI. In 1961, the Directorate of NSS started functioning under the Department of Statistics of government of India, and later in 1971, the design and analysis wing of NSS was shifted from ISI to the Department of Statistics forming the National Sample Survey Organisation.
J. B. S. Haldane joined the ISI as a research professor from August 1957, and stayed on until February 1961, when he had a falling out with ISI Director P.C. Mahalanobis over Haldane's going on a much-publicized hunger strike to protest the United States pressuring U.S. National Science Fair winners Gary Botting and Susan Brown from attending an ISI banquet to which many prominent Indian scientists had been invited. Haldane helped the ISI grow in biometrics. Haldane also played a key role in developing the structure and content of the courses offered by ISI.
Until 1959, ISI was associated with the University of Calcutta. By 'The Indian Statistical Institute Act 1959' of the Parliament of India, amended in 1995, ISI was declared an institute of national importance, and was authorised to hold examinations and to grant degrees and diplomas in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Economics, and in any other subject related to statistics as identified by the institute from time to time. ISI is a public university, as the same act also states that ISI would be funded by the Central Government of India.
ISI had by the 1960s started establishing special service units in New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad to provide consultancy services to business, industry and governmental public service organisations in the areas of statistical process control, operations research and industrial engineering. Additionally, Bangalore had a Documentation Research and Training Centre. In the early 1970s, the Delhi and Bangalore units were converted to teaching centres. In 2008, ISI Chennai was upgraded to a teaching centre. In 2011, ISI added a new centre in Tezpur.

Campuses

The major objectives of the ISI are to facilitate research and training of Statistics, to indulge in development of statistical theory and in application of statistical techniquesin the scenarios of planning at national level and in theoretical development of natural and social sciences, to participate in the process of data collection and analysis, to operate related projects in planning and improvement of efficiency of management and production.
The Sanskrit phrase भिन्नेष्वैक्यस्य दर्शणम्, which literally means the philosophy of unity in diversity, is incorporated in the logo of the institute, and is the motto of ISI. ISI Kolkata is the headquarter with centers at Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, New Delhi. Tezpur, the 4th center of ISI was inaugurated in 2011.
CenterCityStateFoundedTypeNotes
ISI KolkataKolkataWest Bengal1931HQ
ISI ChennaiChennaiTamil Nadu1960Centre
ISI BangaloreBengaluruKarnataka1966CentreStarted as unit in 1954
ISI HyderabadHyderabadTelangana1974CentreThe second year of the MSQMS course is conducted here.
ISI DelhiNew DelhiDelhi1974Centre
ISI TezpurTezpurAssam2011Centre-

ISI, Kolkata

ISI Kolkata has a campus consisting of six addresses at 201 through 206 Barrackpore Trunk Road, Bonhooghly.
ISI Kolkata campus is eco-friendly, as conceived by Mahalanobis. Hollow bricks that protect from heat and noise were used with minimum use of reinforced concrete, to avoid radiation. There was no use of bitumen-basalt combination at the roads inside ISI campuses. This helps in reduction of radiation and preservation of rain-water to maintain equilibrium in ground-water level.
The Kolkata campus offers bachelor's level degree course in Statistics, Statistical Data Science, master's degree course in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Cryptology & Security, Quality Reliability and Operations Research and Quantitative Economics. Major divisions and units are: Statistics and Mathematics Unit, Human Genetics Unit, Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit, Geological Studies Unit, Advanced Computation and MicroElectronics Unit, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit, Machine Intelligence Unit, Electronics and Communication Sciences Unit, Applied Statistics Unit, Economic Research Unit, Linguistic Research Unit, Sociology Research Unit, Psychometry Research Unit and Population Studies Unit.
The Kolkata campus houses the International Statistical Education Centre, which opened in 1950. This centre provides training in statistics to sponsored students mainly from the Middle East, South and South East Asia, the Far East and the Commonwealth Countries of Africa. The centre also offers various short-term courses in statistics and related subjects.
The Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility, an associate institute of Indian Statistical Institute and established in Kolkata in 2005, is unique in the country. Apart from conducting basic research, it offers a 3-month course and promotes less endowed institutes by providing fellowships and research grants.
The Central Library of ISI is located at Kolkata with branches at the other facilities. The library has over 200,000 volumes of books and journals with a special emphasis on the field of statistics and related studies. The main branch also has a collection of official reports, reprints, maps, and microfilms. The library receives over a thousand new technical and scientific journals every year. The Library has databases on CD-ROM and is working on further digitization of the collection. The library has a separate collection of works on the topics of mathematics and statistics called the Eastern Regional Centre of NBHM collection, funded by grants from the National Board for Higher Mathematics. It also looks to set up research unit in artificial intelligence