View source for Kiaer, Anders Nicolai


{| class="wikitable"
!Copyright notice <!-- don't remove! --> 
|-
| This article ''Anders Nicolai Kiaer'' was adapted from an original article by Eugene William Seneta, which appeared in ''StatProb: The Encyclopedia Sponsored by Statistics and Probability Societies''. The original article ([<nowiki>http://statprob.com/encyclopedia/AndersNicolaiKIAER.html</nowiki> StatProb Source], Local Files: [[Media:AndersNicolaiKIAER.pdf|pdf]] | [[Media:AndersNicolaiKIAER.tex|tex]]) is copyrighted by the author(s), the article has been donated to ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics'', and its further issues are under ''Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License'. All pages from StatProb are contained in the [[:Category:Statprob|Category StatProb]].
|-
|}

<!-- \documentclass[12pt]{article} 
     \begin{document} 
     \noindent -->
'''Anders Nicolai KIAER'''

b. 15 September 1838 - d. 16 April 1919

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Summary.''' Founding Director of the Central Bureau of Statistics in
Norway, Kiaer contributed to sample survey and to international statistics.

Anders Nicolai Kiaer was born in the small town of Drammen in Norway. He 
graduated 
from the University of Oslo in Law in 1860. He began his career as a civil servant 
in 1861 
and by 1867 he became head of the Statistical Division of the Ministry of the 
Interior. He 
soon realised the need for an independent, centralised body responsible for the 
collection 
and interpretation of data collected by the various ministries. He therefore 
became an active 
spokesman for the establishment of such a body, and in 1876 the Central Bureau 
of 
Statistics was established with him as its first Director, a position he held 
until his 
retirement in 1913. 

As the first director he formulated the basic principles for 
the statistical 
agency and gave Norwegian official statistics a framework that still exists 
today: an 
independent, centralised statistical office, whose responsibility includes 
quantitative 
research in the fields of economy , social science and demography.
During his time as Director, together with a very small staff he developed the 
Norwegian 
Statistical Office into an efficient and progressive institute. In 1876 the 
Statistical Office 
employed one professional and 13 clerks in addition to Kiaer. When he retired, 
the staff had 
increased to 33 civil servants. In addition to centralising statistics from 
various ministries, 
he was responsible for several censuses of population, agriculture and 
establishments 
around the turn of the century, measurement of vital events and several other 
official 
investigations. In his work he used a number of "modern" techniques and methods 
like 
combining sources at micro as well as at macro level. He performed a number of 
well 
designed sample surveys and introduced the use of the newly developed electronic 
punch 
cards tabulator as early as in 1894.

Besides founding and developing the Norwegian statistical office into an 
institute of high 
national, as well as international standards, Kiaer was promoting the use of 
statistics as an 
important tool in the economic and social development of the country. He 
performed 
statistical investigations within  a number of fields ranging from demographic 
research, 
alcohol abuse, public pension schemes to distribution of income and poverty. He 
was an 
active member of a number of societies and governmental committees.
Within the field of demography he studied mortality and fertility patterns, and 
compared 
them with those of other countries. He was particularly interested in studying 
the fall in the 
birth rates generally observed around the turn of the century. A major study of 
fertility was published 
soon after his death in the "Journal of the American Statistical Association''
in 1919. In 
that connection the editor noted: ``... Hardly any writer anywhere and probably 
no American 
is more familiar than Kiaer with the abundant statistical literature dealing 
with the fall in 
the birth rate in most civilised countries."

Kiaer also did some pioneering investigations in economic statistics. He was 
in favour of a 
proposed system for income taxation, and based on sample survey data on income, 
occupation and place of residence, he calculated the effects of a number of 
alternative 
taxation rules on various population groups. He also calculated the total 
national income 
and compared it with similar calculations for other countries. He was, however, 
critical of 
these international comparisons as they did not include work done in the 
households, 
primarily by women. For Norway he estimated the total value of such activities, 
and found 
that it amounted to approximately 15\% of the total income. Similar 
investigations were not 
repeated until very recent in Norway.

Probably Kiaer's most important contribution to statistics was his pioneering 
work in the 
design and use of several sample surveys. He was a pioneer in developing the 
practice of 
such surveys, and through his persistent, systematic and detailed defence of the 
method, vis 
a vis a sceptical, international audience of statisticians, he cleared the 
ground for the 
theoretical development that followed.

In an early survey a sample of forms was extracted from the population census 
of 1890. For 
this sample, information from the tax authorities concerning income and property 
was added 
to the census form for each person. This procedure made it possible to 
distribute income by 
age, sex, occupation and other characteristics. In addition to being a 
pioneering contribution 
to survey sampling this investigation is also an early example of combining 
survey data 
with administratively collected data at micro level.
The sample for this survey was selected in several stages. First a sample of 
towns and rural 
communes was selected. Within each selected area males aged 17, 22, 27, 32, etc. 
and 
whose names began with certain letters were selected to be included in the 
sample. The 
sampling fraction in the towns was 3.1 per cent, while it was 1.54 per cent for 
the rural 
communes.
In a survey in 1894, data was collected independently of the census. The survey 
was 
undertaken to collect data needed for planning and evaluating a proposed 
retirement 
pension and sickness insurance scheme. This survey demonstrated the real 
potential of 
sample surveys as a collection method by which it is possible to meet ad hoc 
needs for 
detailed information. Often such information cannot be collected in a census 
either because 
it is needed between two censuses or because the amount of detail needed makes 
it 
practically impossible to collect for the whole population.
For this survey Kiaer also first selected a sample of towns and rural communes, 
In the 
second stage he had to introduce a kind of area sampling, as the census lists 
were out-dated. 
In Oslo streets were chosen as second stage units, while the unit varied 
somewhat in the rest 
of the country depending on information available. In the last stage addresses 
were selected 
systematically by giving a start address and a selection interval for each 
``street".
In the two surveys Kiaer used most of the design methods used today: 
stratification, 
selection in several stages, area sampling and unequal selection probabilities. 
The theory of 
all these techniques was not developed until many years after Kiaer did this 
work, but by 
using intuition and common sense, he managed to select samples which even 
today would 
be considered of good quality.
Concepts like sampling error and confidence interval and their relationship with 
sample size 
were developed much later. However, as a result of his work with several surveys, 
Kiaer 
developed some good practical guidelines for evaluating the accuracy of the 
results from 
surveys. He was aware that the accuracy depends as much on the selection method 
applied 
as on the size of the sample. Furthermore, he knew that some statistical 
phenomena need a 
larger and more carefully selected sample than others.

Kiaer presented his results in a series of meetings in the newly established 
International Statistical Institute (ISI), of which he 
was a founding member. At his first presentation in Berne in
1895 there was a strong opposition to 
the use of surveys. This did not discourage Kiaer from continuing his work in 
the area, and 
he defended the method at the next ISI meeting,
in St. Petersburg four years later. At this meeting 
there was 
still a great deal of scepticism about the method, but it was decided to nominate a 
subcommittee to further study the feasibility of the method. The committee 
presented its 
findings at the ISI meeting in Berlin in 
1903. The conclusion was that if the sample is 
carefully 
selected the survey method could be recommended. It was not until the Rome
meeting in 1925 the 
survey method 
was again discussed at an ISI meeting. Then the question was not whether 
to use the 
method, but rather how to use it.

Kiaer published a large number of articles in French, English and German in 
addition to 
Norwegian. A complete bibliography is available from the library of Statistics 
Norway.


====References====
{|
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|   Kruskal, W. and Mosteller, F. (1980). Representative sampling, IV: the history of the concept in statistics, 1895-1939. ''International Statistical Review'', '''48''', 169-195. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|   Seng, Y.P. (1951). Historical survey of the development of sampling theories and practice. ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A'', '''114''', 214-231.
|-
|}


Ib Thomsen

<!-- \end{document} -->


<references />

[[Category:Statprob]]
[[Category:Biographical]]