World Statistics Day

Dear readers,

I am happy to let you know that I am posting the first post of my blog on this auspicious day, i.e. The World Statistics Day.

A little history

20th October is known to be the World Statistics Day since 2010. At its 41st Session in February 2010, the United Nations Statistical Commission declared the 20th of October as the first World Statistics Day.

This day is celebrated to achieve reliable, consistent, and timely data to obtain statistical indicators of a country's progress in making key decisions and policies.

Timeline

20-Oct-2010: The first World Statistics Day was celebrated with the theme: 'Celebrating the many achievements of official statistics.'

Below are a few glimpses of how the world celebrated the first-ever World Statistics Day.

The then President Barack Obama, United states posted a message "I am pleased to send greetings to all those celebrating World Statistics Day. Statistical data drives countless decisions which impact our Nation. It guides representation in the United States Congress; informs our economic, social service, and national security outlook; and helps determine where infrastructure like schools, hospitals, and roads should be built (…) As you gather to acknowledge the global statistical system and raise public awareness of statistics, I wish you all the best."

20-Oct-2015: The second World Statistics Day was celebrated with the theme: 'Better data, better lives.'

Since 2015, The World Statistics Day is planned to be celebrated every five years. This day signifies the importance of statistics and the role of the statisticians around the world to make the world of data,a better palce.

20-Oct-2020: The third World Statistics Day is celebrated with the theme: 'Connecting the world with data we can trust.'

This theme reflects the importance of trust, authoritative data, innovation and the public good in national statistical systems.

The official logo represents this idea with a circular shape that portrays the globe, and a bar chart with a checkmark signifying trusted security.

The Indian National Statistics Day

The National Statistics Day is celebrated by the Government of India on June 29th, since 2007 to mark the birth anniversary of Prof. P C Mahalanobis, who is also the father of Indian Statistics.

As of now, 103 countries celebrate a national Statistics Day, including 51 African countries. The African countries celebrate their national statistical day on 18th November.

The Importance of Statistics

The world is filled with a lot of unsolved mysteries from the Big bang to the Dark matter. Statistics is an important mathematical concept that serves an important role in solving these mysteries and understanding the day-to-day happenings of the Earth. Without the help of statistics, it would be impossible to study the ever-growing world of Big Data.

Let us all take a vow on this World Statistics Day serving the theme, 'Connecting the world with data we can trust' that we statisticians would never produce false data and interpretations and would always ensure that we would work for improving the reliability of the existing data. As current and upcoming statistician let us all believe to make a world where there is trustworthy data that the world can connect to.

Published by

Arthi R

Freelance Statistician

Sources:

https://worldstatisticsday.org/

https://unstats.un.org/unsd/wsd/

https://www.un.org/en/observances/statistics-day