Google celebrates 125th birth anniversary of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis with doodle

Moneycontrol News
Google celebrated the 125th birth anniversary of eminent statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis with a doodle on June 29.

Mahalanobis is credited as the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). He was also a founding member of the Planning Commission — famous for its varied reports, including the five year plans.

Mahalanobis was educated at Brahmo Boys School in Kolkata, which was founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. He studied Physics at the Presidency College and pursued higher education at the University of London where he was introduced to statistics.

He is known for laying the groundwork for pilot surveys and sampling methods among other for data collection in the 1930s. These methods culminated in the National Sample Survey (NSS).

Launched in 1949, the NSS was one of the most ambitious household surveys of the time, covering over 1,800 villages and over 1 lakh households across the country.  The methods used by the NSS became the standard for household surveys across the world.

The surveys incorporated data on several topics between 1937 and 1944, covering tea drinking habits, consumer expenditure, crop acreage and plant diseases.

Mahalanobis served as the honorary statistical adviser to the Government of India in 1949. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan for his work in 1968. Mahalanobis died on 28 June, 1972, a day before his 79th birthday.