The Estonian Statistical Society

Founded in 1992


The Estonian Statistical Society was founded on the 30 September 1992 at a meeting held in the Conference Hall of the Tartu University Library. At that meeting Ene-Margit Tiit was elected as president. The aims of the Society were established, the most important being to provide a forum for contacts between statisticians working in different areas.

Let us give some details about Ene-Margit Tiit who was born on 22 April 1934 in Tartu, Estonia. Her father was the mathematician Arnold Humal. She attended school in Tallinn, graduating in 1952, and then studied at the University of Tartu, being awarded her first degree in 1957. She studied for her doctorate advised by Gunnar Kangro (1913-1975), who was an expert in summation theory and held the Chair of Mathematical Analysis at the University of Tartu. She was awarded her doctorate in 1963. Appointed to the University of Tartu, she taught there and published on mathematical statistics, population sciences, sociology and anthropology.

In 1995 a new Council was elected: Ene-Margit Tiit was re-elected President for three years; Ülo Randaru, Helina Vigla and Reet Malbe were elected Vice-Directors of the Statistical Office; Villem Tamm, Tonu Kollo and Ebu Tamm were elected as Ordinary Council Members.

The main aim of the Estonian Statistical Society has been the integration of people working in different areas of statistics. In order to achieve this aim, a series of national one- and two-days conferences has been organized. Here is the details of some of these conferences in 1995-97.

23-24 March 1995, in Tartu. Statistics in Social Sciences (24 reports, about 60 participants).

19-20 September 1995, in Tallinn. Official Statistics (18 reports, about 100 participants). The general meeting of Estonian Statistical Society was also held on this occasion.

3-8 June 1996, in Tartu. Tartu Conference on Computational Statistics and Statistical Education. A workshop on Statistics at School was also held (co-organised with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, University of Tartu) (40 reports, about 80 participants, including 35 foreign guests from 19 countries). The working language of the conference was English. During the workshop the reports and discussions were interpreted.

18 November 1996, in Tallinn. Statistics and Quality (20 reports, about 200 participants).

17-18 April 1997, in Rakvere. Medical Statistics and Registers (16 reports and about 70 participants).

Full reports of these conferences have been published in the Journal of Estonian Statistical Society, published twice a year. The Society began publication of the Eesti Statistikaseltsi Teabevihik (Journal of Estonian Statistical Society) in 1993. This journal contains reports of the national one- and two-days conferences run by the Society. Ene-Margit Tiit writes [2]:-
... the Estonian Statistical Society was founded [in 1992] and since then has publish a journal twice a year. Different issues are devoted to different special topics: medical statistics, quality design, statistical education, statistics in life sciences, software, insurance, econometrics, official statistics etc. Almost all papers have been written in Estonian. One aim of this journal is to develop the Estonian statistical vocabulary.
For a version of the complete article by Ene-Margit Tiit, see THIS LINK.

Here are details of some later conferences:
25-26 January 2007, in Tallinn. The 19th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Statistical Literacy (15 reports)

15-16 April 2008, in Tallinn. The 20th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Statistics of Quality and Quality of Statistics (13 reports, 169 participants)

24-25 March 2009, in Tallinn. The 21st Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Registers and National Census (20 reports, 200 participants)

13-14 April 2010, in Tartu. The 22nd Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Statistics and Life Sciences.

20-21 April 2011, in Tallinn. The 23rd Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Will the Estonian population survive?

27-28 September 2012, in Tartu. The 24th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on New Trends in Statistics.

12-13 November 2013, in the National Library of Estonia. The 25th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Demographic processes in the Baltic Sea region in the 21st century.

21 April 2014, in Tartu. The 26th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Statistics and Life. This meeting also celebrated the 80th birthday of Ene-Margit Tiit.

20 October 2015, in Viljandi. The 27th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Registers and big data statistics.

24 November 2016, in Tallinn. The 28th Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society on Household surveys and registers.
In 2012 the Estonian Statistical Society celebrated the 20th anniversary of their founding. They received many letters of congratulation. Here is the first paragraph of one from the Lithuanian Statistical Society [1]:-
With the greatest pleasure the Lithuanian Statistical Society congratulates the Estonian Statistical Society, all Estonian statisticians celebrating their 20-year anniversary. We have witnessed with admiration how your society progressed to maturity during a short but challenging historical period. The conferences organized by the Estonian Statistical Society attracted hundreds of participants, being a pronounced and impressive sign of your accomplishments. This demonstrates how committed you are: statistics can be attractive and interesting. At the same time, you know better than others: it is indispensable for an advanced society.
Honorary Members

Two honorary members were created in 2009 at the 21st Conference of the Estonian Statistical Society held in Tallinn.
25 March 2009 Ene-Margit Tiit

25 March 2009 Gunnar Kulldorff
We gave some biographical details of Ene-Margit Tiit above. We now give some details of the other honorary member, Gunnar Kulldorff. He was born in Malmö, Sweden, on 6 December 1927. He studied mathematics, statistics and mechanics at the University of Lund between 1946 and 1949 when he was awarded his bachelor's degree. He received a licentiate in statistics from Lund University in 1954 and he was appointed to the Department of Statistics there. He continued undertaking research for a doctorate, advised by Carl-Erik Quensel and Harald Cramér. He was awarded a Ph.D. in 1961 for his thesis Contributions to the theory of estimation from grouped and partially grouped samples. He became the first professor of statistics at Umea University in 1965. He was a frequent visitor to the United States, being a visiting professor at a number of universities in the 1970s and 1980s. He was elected to the International Statistical Institute in 1968 and served in several roles including president in 1989-91. After the Baltic countries became independent in 1991 he made visits leading to exchange programmes in statistics between Nordic and Baltic countries. This led to the creation of the Baltic-Nordic-Ukrainian Network on Survey Statistics with its annual conferences. Gunnar Kulldorff died on 25 June 2015 in Umea, Sweden.
Presidents of the Estonian Statistical Society

1992-2000 Ene-Margit Tiit

2000-2004 Tonu Kollo

2004-2007 Ebu Tamm

2007-2010 Kalev Pärna

2010-2013 Imbi Traat

2013-2016 Kaja Sõstra

Visit the society website.

References (show)

  1. Estonian Statistical Society website. http://www-1.ms.ut.ee/ess/
  2. E-M Tiit, Experiences in Publishing a Statistics Journal in Estonia, Proceedings International Conference on Teaching Statistics 5 (1998), 502-504.

Last Updated February 2018