kniga 7 - Probability and Statistics 1 - Sheynin, Oscar

Russian, and especially of the Soviet science. Together with the past discussions on issues ofphilosophy, literature, music, and, finally, biology, these decisions directly indicate that it isnecessary to revise the contents of statistics from the viewpoint of the struggle againstbourgeois ideology as well as for attaining closer proximity between theoreticalinvestigations and the problems of socialist practice.Among statisticians, the passion for the theories of foreign, and especially English andAmerican scientists, is still great. Along with these theories, often uncritically grasped, aWeltanschauung alien to Soviet scientists, and in particular the Machian concepts of theAnglo-American statistical school of Pearson, Fisher and others, had sometimes beenintroduced. Even during this Conference attempts had been made to force through theMachian Weltanschauung disguising it by loud revolutionary phrases (Brodovitsky,Zakharov).The Conference accepts with satisfaction the statement of a most eminent Sovietstatistician, the Full Member of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Professor Romanovsky,who confessed to having made ideological mistakes in some of his early works. TheConference considers it necessary to list the following essential shortcomings in the work ofSoviet statisticians.1. The existence of a gap between theory and practice resulting in that some serioustheoretical findings were not carried out onto practical application.2. The lack of prominent monographs generalizing numerous theoretical achievements ofSoviet statistics and harmoniously explicating the concepts of Soviet statistics 8 .3. The methods of bourgeois statistics were not always critically interpreted; sometimesthey had been propagandized and applied.4. The teaching of the theory of probability and mathematical statistics, in spite of theirever increasing significance for studying most important issues in natural sciences,technology and economics, is either altogether lacking in the appropriate academicinstitutions or carried out insufficiently and sometimes on a low level. In particular, utterlyinsufficient attention is given to the training of specialists in mathematical statistics in theuniversities and the teaching of the elements of statistics is not at all introduced intechnological academic institutions.5. The publication of a special statistical periodical has yet not begun 9 which greatlyhampers the intercourse and the exchange of experience between theoreticians andpractitioners.6. The existing educational literature and monographs on statistics and probability theoryare meager, their quality is sometimes unsatisfactory and they are insufficiently connectedwith concrete applications.In mathematical statistics, the Conference considers research in the following directionsas most topical.1. A construction of a consistent system of mathematical statistics embracing all of itsnewest ramifications and based on the principles of the Marxist dialectical method.2. A further development of the theory of estimation of parameters and of checkinghypotheses. In particulara) The development of such a theory for series of dependent observations.b) The development of methods for an unfixed number of observations (of the type ofsequential analysis).3. The development of statistical methods of inspection of manufacture and of finishedarticles; and in particular of methods not assuming a stationary condition of manufacturing.4. Construction of a rational methodology of designing and treating field experiments andagricultural forecasts.5. The further development of statistical methods of investigation in geophysics; inparticular, in synoptic meteorology.