The Athens Meeting of the International Statistical Institute

Abstract

ON THE invitation of the Government of Greece, extended at London in 1934, the International Statistical Institute held at Athens, September 27 to October 1, 1936, its twenty-third meeting, and the ninth since 1923, when the series began again after an interruption of ten years. At each session the General Assembly, or whole body of members, breaks up into not more than four sections, dealing respectively (at Athens) with demography, economic statistics, social statistics, and mathematical methods. The bulk of the work is done in the sections where (1) communications from members which have been printed and mailed in advance of the session are examined, usually after a summary explanation by the writer, and (2) reports of committees, which also have been circulated beforehand are discussed, leading in many cases to recommendations by the section to the General Assembly. Towards the end of the week, the General Assembly considers and usually adopts these recommendations. At Athens, departing from recent Institute procedure, the statistics of distribution or business, the recent developments of which are of especial interest, was considered by the General Assembly on the basis of a committee report without preliminary examination in a section. The session received eight communications and five reports on problems in demography, nine communications and four reports on problems in economic statistics, ten communications and four reports on problems in social statistics, and five communications and two reports on problems in mathematical methodology, a total of 32 communications and 15 reports. The communications will be disregarded for lack of space, but action on the leading section recommendations calls for a summary. Regarding census methods in the Far East, the General Assembly advised: that methods should be prescribed in detail by the central government; that there should be a preliminary count of dwellings; that the census should be made by enumerators carefully selected, instructed, and supervised; that the schedules should carry only demographic questions; that, if no census can be taken, an estimate of the population should be made by the representative method under a uniform plan; and that all results should be tabulated at a central office.