The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee attended the 48th Convocation of Indian Statistical Institute today (January 10, 2014) at Kolkata.

Speaking on the occasion, the President said a large pool of competent statisticians in the country is necessary to support the analytical needs of the public and private sectors. He said that universities and academic institutions teaching Statistics and allied subjects must take due care to up-grade the standards of instruction. ISI should take the lead in transforming the academic management of this important discipline.

The President said data mining and statistical techniques have been used to initiate counter terrorism programmes like the National Intelligence Grid. Efforts have also been made to introduce statistical systems for estimation and control of fake Indian currency notes. He said "it is a fact that statistical models and techniques bestow great advantage to the user. However, it is prudent to also exercise due caution in analyzing large data and drawing inferences. Capturing unstructured data and converting them into a structured format are technically challenging problems. They have to be pursued in an enlightened manner”.