The 60th World Statistics Congress of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) will officially open on Sunday afternoon, July 26. Gathering the most respected experts on statistics, ISI will discuss how a number of aspects of our environmental, social and economic reality will be measured along the 21st century. Founded 130 years ago, ISI is the oldest and the most important association of statisticians in the world. For the first time, a Brazilian person will assume its presidency in 2015. After 60 years, the IBGE will host it again in Brazil. ISI 2015 will take place at Riocentro, located in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro, between July 26 and July 31, from 9 AM until 5:40 PM. Those journalists who want to register should contact
the Coordination of Social Communication of IBGE.

The President of IBGE and a representative of the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management, as well as the heads of the main national statistical offices in the world will participate in the opening session, which will start at 4 PM on Sunday, July 26.

Fifty sessions per day.

1,600 registered persons 1,300 articles. 250 special or invited sessions along five days. Behind these numbers, the state of the art in terms of statistical studies produced by 130 countries.

The most recent advances in different theoretical areas of statistics will be approached in the 50 sessions that will take place along the six days of ISI 2015. As a tradition, ISI congresses discuss statistical applications which encompass all the areas of knowledge and deeply affect the lives of ordinary citizens.

Monday (July 27) - Industrial statistics and the future of sampling surveys are among the subjects that will be discussed in the morning, as well as the use of multivariate analysis in Astronomy and the surveys carried out by the central banks of different countries. In the afternoon, the highlights are: neuro-statistics; statistical approaches in studies on corruption; changes in standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for studies on unemployment and the evolution of surveys on disability in adults and children.

Tuesday (July 28) - Privacy and confidentiality in the big data era; women in statistics and the imbalance among genders; challenges in the international comparability of indicators on disability; statistics of public debt of governments; how we are measuring urbanization and its problems; theory and practice in the quantification of Smart Cities are some of the highlights on Tuesday, as well as four sessions on statistics and the environment.

Wednesday (July 29) - Statistical applications in satellite images; estimation in small areas with economic and commercial data; quantitative methods to investigate hunger and poverty are some of the themes to be discussed on Wednesday, as well as a session on how statistics can help to make decisions and predict results in sports. The Inter-American Statistical Institute will organize a session on the implementation of fully-digital population censuses in the Americas, an innovation pioneered by the IBGE back in 2010.

Thursday (July 30) - The quantification of native populations in different countries will be discussed on Thursday. The challenges for statistics in Latin America; the use of data from social media in environmental and epidemiological monitoring; the development of indicators for human rights are also highlights.

Friday (July 31) - The perspectives in the area of genetic statistics; the quantification of human rights; remote sensing in agricultural statistics; statistical engineering; the challenge of big data and the official statistics; the 'green economy' index and the development countries; theory and practice of statistics beyond national boundaries in a global and open economy are among the highlights of the last day of ISI 2015.

Along the week, a number of ISI sessions will discuss the challenges and the future of teaching statistics, as well as a number of aspects of the international cooperation among national statistical offices. See the complete agenda here. The official language is English.

130 years of statistics and citizenship

Founded in 1885, the International Statistical Institute is the oldest and the most important association of statisticians in the world. Its mission is to promote understanding, development and good practices in all the areas of statistics. ISI has about four thousand members coming from 130 countries, from who more than two thousand are elected due to their scientific contributions.

Several members participated in the creation of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, adopted by a number of national statistical offices - including the IBGE - and recently endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. The biannual congresses of ISI have been taking place since 1887 (Rome), just briefly interrupted during the two world wars. Brazil was among the 11 countries represented in the first ISI congress.

ISI will be chaired by a Brazilian for the first time

In 2015, professor Pedro Luis do Nascimento Silva, full researcher of the National School of Statistical Sciences (ENCE/IBGE), was elected president of ISI. This is the first time that this responsibility is granted to a Brazilian, which shows the international recognition of the statistics produced in our country, as well as of the IBGE, which will host this world congress.

PhD in Statistics from the University of Southampton (1996), professor Pedro is considered the most important expert in sampling surveys in Brazil. At IBGE, Pedro has been performing an important role in the development of statistical methods for more than 30 years. He was a professor in the University of Southampton and consultant in the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom. He also chaired the International Association of Survey Statisticians and the Inter-American Statistical Institute. In 2014, he was elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, a titration annually granted and limited to less than 1% of the members of that association.

60 years ago, top names of Statistics visited Petrópolis

This is not the first time that the ISI congress takes place in Brazil. In 1955, Brazil hosted the 29th World Statistics Congress, which gathered the top names of this scientific field today associated with fundamental methods, equations and theorems. Exactly 60 year ago, the city of Petrópolis hosted more than a hundred of scientists coming from 40 countries, like British Ronald Fisher - founder of the modern statistics and who also highly contributed to genetics -, Indian Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao - theorist of statistical inference and still active -, Americans Walter Willcox - non-parametric statistics and the test after his name - and Gertrude Cox - planning of statistical experiments -, French Émile Borel - introducer of the infinite monkey theorem and of the Borel–Cantelli lemma - and Italian Corrado Gini - creator of the famous index that measures income inequality.

The ministry of Foreign Relations, Raul Fernandes, opened the event. The Brazilian delegation was headed by Teixeira de Freitas - who devised the IBGE and organized the Brazilian statistics through the integration of the three government spheres - and also counted on Italian Giorgio Mortara - father of the Brazilian demography and who coordinated the first two population censuses of the IBGE. During the congress, the Quitandinha Hotel - one of the most luxurious at that time - housed an exhibition open to the public, including a number of panels on the economic and social reality of Brazil, as well as a collection of publications produced by official statistical offices of a number of countries.