Professor P.C. Mahalanobis, who introduced statistics to India, is a scientist whose absence is felt dearly even today. Mahalanobis’s lifelong courtship with statistics, his unwavering and fearless leadership to advance a statistics and survey culture in India, the founding of the Indian Statistical Institute — “a mighty monument of his handicraft” — and his nurturing of a generation of outstanding academicians have all left behind an enduring legacy. There is little doubt that India was in the Mahalanobis-era nearly five decades prior to his passing on June 28, 1972. Today, in the midst of the shifting socio-economic dynamics in post-pandemic India, he is greatly missed.
The age of Big Data
Over the past 20 years, there has been a global shift in both the nature of data and statistics. With the advent of the Internet and virtually everything confined to the Internet of Things, there has been a flood of data, most of it junk. We now have much more data than what available technology can leverage. This is widely perceived as the era of Big Data.
