Page 630 - Probability and Statistical Inference

14. Appendix 607

created. National Statistical Service was established and Mahalanobis suc-
ceeded in obtaining recognition of Statistics as a discipline, separate from
mathematics, by the Indian Science Congress. Apart from these and host of
other accomplishments of national importance, Mahalanobis also wrote five
books and 210 papers.
Mahalanobis (1932) first constructed statistical tables for the F distribu-
tion since these were directly needed for the analyses of variance in field
experiments. Fisher, on the other hand, popularized tables for ½ log(F), namely
Fisher’s Z. Snedecor’s (1934) book apparently overlooked Mahalanobis’s earlier
contribution and independently provided the F tables saying simply that they
were computed from Fisher’s table.
Mahalanobis’s early papers on meteorology, anthropology, economic plan-
ning, flood control, psychology, multivariate analysis, design of experiments
and sample surveys are particularly noteworthy. He was interested in all as-
pects of science, including biology, geology, genetics, botany, and speech
recognition. He was also a literary figure and critic of his time.
In large-scale surveys, Mahalanobis (1940) pioneered the idea of gathering
samples in successive stages to increase efficiency. The method of using pilot
samples before running the main survey was developed in the same paper.
Wald (1947, p. 2) commented that this fundamental contribution may be re-
garded as a forerunner of Sequential Analysis. Mahalanobis’s D , a measure
2
of distance between two populations, is a fundamental concept in multivariate
analysis.

Figure 14.2.1. P. C. Mahalanobis Centennial Postage Stamp
Issued by the Government of India, 1993
Mahalanobis received the highest honors awarded by the Government
of India including the title Padmabibhusan, which means that the awardee