The Eighteenth Biennial Session of the International Statistical Institute

Abstract

The Eighteenth Biennial Session of the International Statistical Institute was held last summer in Poland. The scientific meetings at Warsaw, August 21-24, were followed by visits to the General National Exposition at Poznan on August 25 and 26 and to the earlier Polish capital at Cracow and the adjacent salt mines of Wieliczka on August 27 and 28. In most respects the meeting does not call for special comment to the members of the American Statistical Association, but there are two points upon which a few words of explanation may be desirable: the first about the plans for meetings at Tokio in 1930 and at Madrid in 1931, the second about an initial step looking towards changing the organization of the Institute and the scope of its work. At the Warsaw meeting, as at the meeting in Rome four years before, the Institute received two invitations for its next meetings. At Rome a decision was made by a ballot which showed that a majority of the members present preferred to accept the invitation of the Government of Egypt. The matter was thus closed, but with a tacit understanding that the meeting four years later would be held in Poland if the Polish invitation were renewed. At Warsaw also two invitations were received, one from Spain, the other from Japan. Unfortunately the plans in the two countries had developed so far and were so connected with other national events that either one of the prospective hosts would have been inconvenienced if the meeting in its Capital had been postponed until 1933. The difficulty was solved by deciding to hold an extraordinary meeting at Tokio in September, 1930, and a regular biennial meeting at Madrid in 1931. It is understood that a generous subvention, the details regarding which will be announced later, will provide for paying a large part of the traveling expenses of such members of the Institute as are able to attend the Tokio meeting. A meeting of the Bureau or Executive Committee was held at Paris on December 1, about which unofficial information has been re-