History

Year of Establishment : 1941

History of the department : The postgraduate Department of Statistics started functioning from July, 1941 with Prof. P.C. Mahalanobis as the Head of the Department and Profs. R.C. Bose and S.N. Roy as regular faculty members. Housed in the College Street campus of the University and having a bare minimum of physical facilities, it became the first full-fledged department in Asia offering a post-graduate degree in Statistics.

Among six students of the first batch who completed their post-graduation from the Department were Prof. H.K. Nandi and Prof. C.R. Rao, the two illustrious sons of the Department, who were destined to become leading researchers in statistics in the coming decades. From this inception the Department set a very high standard of teaching and research. Illustrious teachers and researchers like Professors P.K. Bose, H.K. Nandi, A. Bhattacharya, B.N. Ghosh, M.N. Ghosh, C.R. Rao and K.R. Nair figured in the list of faculty members in the first decade of its existence. Fundamental contributions to different fields of Statistics made by them during this period earned a tremendous reputation for the Department as a breeding ground of top quality statisticians.

The Department is still considered to be one of the best Statistics Department in the country in terms of its research output, curriculum, teaching and student quality. Its curricula serve as models to the other universities. It is the first department in the country to design two new courses a few years back viz. statistics for development and evolution of statistical concepts and later these were introduced in the M.Sc. syllabus. The students of the department have been consistently doing well in the Indian Statistical Service Examination conducted by UPSC and Ph.D. entrance tests like NET, GATE.

The Department had switched its M.Sc. course from the annual to the semester system from the academic session 20102011. A review of the syllabus was made in 2012-2013 (after 3 years) and a new syllabus introduced from the 2013-2014 session. Currently the number of elective papers offered in the 3rd semester is 3 while a module of special modules consisting of 3 papers are offered in the 4th semester. In accordance with the thrust area, the elective papers offered are as varied as Analysis, Probability Theory, Bayesian Analysis, Operation Research, Econometrics, Demography, Development Statistics and Advanced Sample Survey while the special modules offered include Statistical Inference, Biostatistics, Industrial Statistics, Economic Statistics, Astrostatistics and Advanced Design of Experiments.

The strength of the Department, however, lies in its continual search for excellence and for its endeavour to adapt itself to the changing scenario of Statistics as a subject and to keep abreast with the best in the emerging fields.

Special award/ recognition from UGC or related statutory body:

• The Department enjoyed two phases of the DRS and one of DSA under the UGC-SAP scheme; currently the 2nd phase of DSA is on.
• The FIST programme of DST was implemented during 2005-2010.
• The Department received support from the COSIST programme of UGC during 1991-1996.

Thrust areas in teaching and research of the academic department/centre:

• Statistical Inference
• Statistical Methods
• Bio-Statistics
• Application of Statistics in Social Sciences, Economics and Industry
• Statistics in Physical Science
• Statistical Computing

Major activities :

Students placement

• M.Sc. students are placed through campus interviews to the extent of 90%. Some recent recruiters include Mu Sigma, Bridge i2i, Nielsen, Barclays, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, Cytel Inc., Genpact, Novartis, HSBC, Bridgetree Research Services (P) Ltd., and ICICI Lombard.

International conferences

• In collaboration with Calcutta Statistical Association, the Department organizes a series of Triennial International Symposia on Probability and Statistics every third year, the ninth edition of which took place in December 2015 (see http://triennial.calcuttastatisticalassociation.org/brochureImage.php for details)
• The Department is celebrating its Platinum Jubilee year in 2016 with an International Conference on Applications of Statistics during December 21-23, 2016 ( http://stat.caluniv.in/platinum)

Additional information:

• The Department participates in the Industry-academia partnership programme on Analytics between Genpact and CU (2015-2017) whereby selected M.Sc. students receive training in the form of lectures, workshops, visits to premises etc.
• The current syllabi are available at http://www.stat.caluniv.in/course.htm..

Contact

Campus : Taraknath Palit Shiksha Prangan (Ballygunge Science College campus)

Address for communication : 35 Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata 700019, WB