IS INTERNATIONAL – AND SURVEY STATISTICS IS COOL AND HOT

The paper presents a short history of international cooperation in statistics, formation of statistical associations and their activities in the world and in the Nordic countries. The cooperation background for Baltic and Nordic statisticians before 1992 is presented. The contents of the activities of the Baltic–Nordic–Ukrainian Network on Survey Statistics is highlighted.


Introduction
Great achievements are usually reached by groups of people.The exchange of scientific knowledge is as old as science itself.As far as statistical sciences are concerned, we are aware of a great deal of correspondence that took place in the era of Hyugens and Pascal.The history of statistics shows statisticians' pursuit of professional communication, exchange of scientific knowledge and discussion thereof, cooperation and consolidation to professional associations.Nowadays, professional communication takes place in a large number of societies and associations uniting representatives of various fields of statistics, conferences, meetings, workshops and seminars, both national and international, providing a forum for the discussion of statistics.The Baltic-Nordic-Ukrainian Network on Survey Statistics has arisen in the context of the tendency for cooperation of researchers in general and statisticians in particular.

Formation of international professional associations
The first national statistical associations started to be organized in the first half of the nineteenth century.At that time, researchers in many fields were striving to found national professional unions: the Royal Agricultural Society was established in western Australia in 1831, the Chemical Society of London was established in 1841, the American Medical Associationin 1847.The aspiration for consolidation also affected statisticians: the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) was founded in the UK in 1834, and the American Statistical Association (ASA) was established in the USA in 1839.It occurred soon that professional communication for statisticians inside the country was too tight.In the middle of the nineteenth century, statisticians from various countries felt the need to meet and present their research results.On the initiative of the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet, the first International Statistical Congress was organized in 1853 in Brussels.It was followed by a sequence of other international statistical congresses, presented in Table 1.

Year Location
When celebrating the anniversary of the RSS in London in 1885, the International Statistical Institute (ISI) was founded.This meeting is called the ISI Congress No 0. 81 people -the elite of that era's statisticians in government and academiajoined the ISI.They developed the structure and statute of the organization.The International Statistical Institute is one of the oldest scientific societies in the world.The period can be characterized as making pushes of science through the borders.The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)the first national astronomical organization to be established in the United Stateswas founded in 1889.Although its name was a reminder of its origins on the Pacific Coast, it soon drew members from around the country and the world.The ISI objectives are defined as the development and improvement of statistical methods and their application throughout the world, all this in the broadest sense of the words.The ISI has meetings, called ISI sessions/congresses, starting from the first one in Rome in 1887, which are regular biennial events.Some of the meetings, which took place in the Nordic region, are: the 7 th Congress in Christiania (Oslo), 1899, and the 11 th Congress in Copenhagen, 1907.The congresses were held regularly until the 24 th conference in Prague, 1938, with a break related to World War II.The next congress was held in New York in 1947.The mission of the ISI was modified in 1947to emphasize international communication among statisticians rather than with governments and to support the international promotion and dissemination of research as well as practice of statistics.Up to now, this largely remains the mission of the ISI [6].Some of the subsequent ISI congresses are presented in Table 2.  Agricultural, environmental, food and regional statistics;  Information and dissemination.Jason T. Girouard shows the importance of statistics in a playful way on a video [2].The United Nations (UN) is an international organization founded in 1945 after World War II by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights.There are now 193 countries in this organization.The United Nations Statistical Commission, established in 1947, is the apex entity of the global statistical system.It brings together the Chief Statisticians from member states from around the world.It is the highest decision-making body for international statistical activities, especially the setting of statistical standards, the development of concepts and methods and their implementation at the national and international level [8].
The Quick and user-friendly access to economic and social data from the main international organizations is presented in [9].

Statistical activities in the Nordic countries
The statisticians of the Nordic countries have deep cooperation traditions.The Nordic Statistical Conference, which convenes once every three years, is a traditional meeting.The Nordic countries alternate in hosting it, and local statistical societies participate in the arrangements.Different topics important for official statistics are chosen for these meetings.
During the past few years, the practice has been to arrange a course on statistical methodology before the conference, targeting, in particular, the younger professionals in the field.Nordic experts have acted as lecturers and have often been joined by other internationally known experts.The list of the Nordic Meetings of Statisticians in Table 3 reflects the tradition.The Journal of Official Statistics started to be published in 1985.It is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes papers related to official statistics on statistical methodology and theory, with emphasis on applications.It is published by Statistics Sweden.
Nordstat is a biennial international meeting for statisticians and probabilists, organized by the Nordic countries, which started in 1965.Baltic countries have joined this tradition.The conferences bring together probabilists and statisticians from Northern European countries and the Baltic States to discuss the recent developments on diverse topics in statistics and probability.The list of some Nordstat conferences is presented in Table 4.The Scandinavian Journal of Statistics has been published since 1974 by the Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics, the Finnish Statistical Society, the Norwegian Statistical Society, and the Swedish Statistical Association.It is devoted to the problems of mathematical statistics.
The year 2013 has been announced as the International Year of Statistics [7].It was a worldwide celebration and recognition of the contributions of statistical science.It shows how important statistics has become to people's lives, and the SAS Institute shows it in a nice way in a video [5].
Visitors.Table 5 shows the number of Baltic, Ukrainian and Belarusian statisticians visiting the University of Umeå, Sweden, in 1992-2012 for studies and research in survey statistics.The distribution of the number of visitors, visits and visit days is presented by country.Table 6 presents the number of visits made by statisticians from the networking countries to the Umeå University by duration in 1992-2012.
Statistical Commission oversees the work of the United Nations Statistics Division and is a Functional Commission of the UN Economic and Social Council.The UN Statistics Division, under the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), serves as the central mechanism within the Secretariat of the United Nations to meet the statistical needs and coordinate the activities of the global statistical system.The Division compiles and disseminates global statistical information, develops standards and norms for statistical activities, and supports countries' efforts to strengthen their national statistical systems.The UN Statistics Division includes:  Economic Commission for Europe,  Economic Commission for Africa,  Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),  Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO),  UN Population Fund (UNFPA),  UN Children's Fund (UNICEF),  UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).The ISI is a non-profit, non-governmental organization and has a consultative status at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 1949.

Fig. 4 .
Fig. 4. Listening to the lecture at the Workshop of the Baltic-Nordic-Ukrainian Network on Survey Statistics in Valmiera, Latvia, 2012

Table 2 .
List of some ISI congresses ISI network includes most of the national statistical offices around the world; it also has links with international statistical organizations and selected professional societies.The current system of governance has an elected Council and an Executive Committee, consisting of the President, President-Elect and Vice-Presidents.The President for 2013-2015 is Mr Vijay Nair, Malaysia, and the permanent Office is in the Hague.The ISI General Assembly is made up of the ISI members and meets during the ISI World Statistics Congresses.The Executive Committee and Council, in turn, report to the ISI members during the ISI General Assembly.ISI members can present questions during the meeting.The ISI associations have their own governance structure, conferences, journals, and other activities.The ISI and its associations work together to serve the needs of the international statistical community.The main journals of the ISI and ISI associations are as follows: Swedishstatistical organization consolidates people with interest lying in official statistics, and has a section for survey statisticians.When founded, the ISI had to influence national statistical agencies, with the first and foremost roleto encourage uniformity in statistical definitions and data collection.Some of the national statistical agencies were founded even before the ISI:1749 Tabellverket, Sweden, the name changed to Statistiska centralbyrån (SCB) in 1858, 1833 Bureau de la Statistique, France, evolved to Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union, situated in Luxembourg.Its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at the European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions [3].Eurostat was established in 1953 to meet the requirements of the Coal and Steel Community.Over the years, its task has broadened, and when the European Community was founded in 1958, it became a Directorate-General (DG) of the European Commission.Eurostat's fields of activity are as follows: 1902 US Census Bureau (USCB), USA, 1905 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia, 1914 Hagstofa Islands, Island, 1919 Department of General Statistics, Lithuania, currently -Statistics Lithuania, 1941 Central Statistical Office, UK, evolved to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 1996.

Table 3 .
List of some Nordic meetings of statisticians

Table 4 .
List of some Nordic conferences on mathematical statistics

Table 5 .
Visitors, visits and visit days at the Umeå University by country

Table 6 .
Number of visits of statisticians of Baltic countries, Belarus and Ukraine to the Umeå University, timesStatistical Science is Internationaland Survey Statistics is Cool and HotIn 1995-2013, 140 Bachelor's and 69 Master's theses on survey statistics were written at Baltic universities, 23 theses at the universities of Belarus and Ukraine.Their distribution is presented in tables 7 and 8.

Table 8 .
Number of graduation theses on survey statistics at the universities of Belarus and Ukraine, 2003-2013 Four textbooks on survey statistics have been written by the members of the Steering Committee.29 doctoral dissertations on survey statistics have been written by the participants of Network summer schools, workshops and conferences.