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'''Corrado GINI'''

b. 23 May 1884 - d. 13 March 1965

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'''Summary.''' From a strictly statistical point of view, Gini's 
contributions pertain mainly 
to mean values and variability and association between statistical variates, 
with original contributions also to economics, sociology, demography and 
biology. The historical context of his life and his personality helped 
make him 
the doyen of Italian statistics.

Corrado Gini was born in Motta di Livenza (in the
Province of Treviso in the North East of Italy. He was the son of rich
landowners. He died in Rome in 1965.

In 1905 he graduated in law from the University of Bologna. His degree
thesis ''Il sesso dal punto di vista statistico'' (Gender from a
Statistical Point of View), which was published in 1908, soon showed
that his interests were not of a juridical nature even if "his study
of the law, however, gave him a taste and a capacity for subtle
arguments tending to submit the facts to logic and so to organise and
dominate them" [3, p.3]. During university he attended additionally
some mathematics and biology courses.

His university career advanced rapidly. In fact in 1909 he was already
temporary professor of Statistics at the University of Cagliari and in
1910, at only 26, he acceded to the Chair of Statistics at the same
University. In 1913 he moved to the University of Padua and from 1927
he held the Chair of Statistics at the University of Rome. 

Between 1926 and 1932 he was President of the Central Institute of
Statistics (ISTAT) and during this period he organised and
co-ordinated the national statistical services, bringing them to a
good and efficient technical level despite various difficulties. His
work concerning the centralisation of statistical information was met
with obstacles placed by bureaucrats holding high positions in the
various ministries and passive resistance from the majority of public
bodies. In fact the battle was so hard that Mussolini, who at that
time was Prime Minister, had to intervene to settle the
controversy. That ruined the good relationship which had initially
been established between Mussolini and Gini. Furthermore, the ever
more frequent interference of fascism were a clear signal that "the
times were changing and Gini's independent and impatient spirit would
brook no interference with his work" [3, p.7]. Therefore in 1932, he
resigned.

With regard to the period in which Gini was President of ISTAT, it
should be noted that although he respected political power he never
submitted to it. On the contrary, it could be said that he used it to
improve the organisation and reliability of the official statistical
service (cf. [8]). However, being President of ISTAT did not distract
Gini from his activity of scientific research. In fact during that
period "he stayed there until 8 p.m. and after he went to the
University until midnight and all of the staff had to stay there with
him" [7, pp.13-14]. His collaborators remember that Gini's working
day began very early; he used to phone his assistants from home at
6.30 a.m.

He had a considerable interest in editorial activity and in 1920 he
founded ''Metron\/'' an international journal of statistics and in
1934 ''Genus\/'' as journal of the Italian Committee for the Study
of Population Problems.

In 1936 he founded the Faculty of Statistical, Demographic and
Actuarial Sciences at the University of Rome of which he was Dean
until 1954. In 1955 he was nominated Professor Emeritus.

During his long academic life he was a member of numerous national and
international scientific societies. In particular he was Honorary
Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (1920), Vice President of the
International Sociological Institute (1933), President of the Italian
Genetics and Eugenics Society (1934), President of the International
Federation of Eugenics Societies in Latin-Language Countries (1935),
President of the Italian Sociological Society (1937), elected to the
International Statistical Institute in 1923 and Honorary Member
(1939), President of the Italian Statistical Society (1941), and
national member of the Accademia dei Lincei (1962).

Gini was married and had two daughters but his frenetic scientific and
academic activity (he had over 800 publications (cf. [3]) including
articles, conference papers, books) probably did not allow him to
dedicate much time to his family.

From a scientific point of view Gini had many interests apart from
statistics, for example economics, sociology, demography and biology
which he considered to be closely related subjects. In particular, he
conceived the population as the body of society towards which the
contributions of all other disciplines belonging to the so-called
human sciences should converge. This way of thinking allowed him to
lay the theoretical foundations of positive sociology which departs
from demography and considers society as an organism with a number of
basic properties in common with biological organisms.

He was awarded ''honoris causa\/'' degrees from various Universities
in Italy and abroad (in Economics at the Catholic University of Milan,
1932, in sociology at the University of Geneva, 1934, in sciences at
the Harvard University, 1936, and in social sciences at the University
of Cordoba in Argentina, 1963). This confirms his wide variety of
scientific interest and the originality of his research. From a
strictly statistical point of view Gini's main contributions concern
three large areas of study, that is mean values, variability and
association between statistical variates. It should be noted that
although he became famous for his concentration ratio (cf. [6]) he also
made other important scientific contributions which unfortunately did
not always receive the deserved recognition. Among these for example
is his "identity" in the field of index numbers (cf. [2]). However,
according to some, "his most remarkable work was the criticism he
made in "The Dangers of Statistics\/'' (Gini, 1939) of
R. A. Fisher's (q.v.) fiducial methods and of the Neyman-Pearson framework
for testing hypotheses. This made him unpopular but it contributed
considerably to acceptance of Bayesian reasoning'' (cf. [7], p.13).

With such criticism Gini "with penetrating logic" showed, according
to Castellano [3, p.30], "how important and unavoidable are prior
probabilities in any judgement on the measures deriving from a sample;
he restored to induction its essential character of a conclusion based
upon an experience (the facts) and an independent and preliminary "a priori\/'' assumption by which the facts can be interpreted''. From
the beginning of his academic career the Italian scholar paid
particular attention to the concept of probability, on which de
Finetti [4, p.85] points out how "on certain specific and significant
points complete agreement is reached between the different attitudes
(even if promoting to different points of view) of Gini and subjectivists".

From Gini's work we can see that he never formal aspects before
substance. The majority of his methodological work arises from the
need to resolve practical problems. In particular, "he was not at all
bothered by complex mathematical formalism and high-sounding names of
some foreign scholars. He often succeeded in demolishing a very
elaborate construction by just making one remark. $\ldots$ Apart from
rare exceptions he considered mathematicians as extravagant people who
had to be watched closely when dealing with a concrete problem"
(cf. [7], p.14). On many occasions he showed that he was not prepared
to sacrifice substance for exaggerated mathematical formalism. In the
field of economics for example his paper in 1956 ''Delusioni
dell'econometria (Delusions in Econometrics)\/'' created a great fuss
amongst econometricians who tended to exaggerate formal aspects
"because of the well-known difficulties of getting down to empirical
brass tacks in economics", and for this reason "many a student has
found it more comfortable to continue the formalism of mathematics or,
as this is often put, to substitute mathematical exercises for
economics" (cf. [5], p.266).

As far as human relationships were concerned, for Gini they were
reduced to a minimum and compliments were almost non-existent. In
particular "his assistants were considered like those of Karl Pearson
(q.v.) who R. A. Fisher $\ldots$ described ``as an army of industrious
robots responsive to a magic wand"''. For university students,
Gini was practically unapproachable and on this point Benedetti
remembers one student, who asked to do his thesis with Gini, "had to
forgo the idea because he was completely discouraged by all the
preparatory studies that were asked of him" (cf. [7], pp.9-10).

From this description it would seem that Gini was a man who lived for
study and work. It would seem that he was a cold person, almost
off-hand with others and completely aware of his considerable
intellectual capabilities. As often happens, appearances do not always
coincide with reality. Benedetti, for example who was close to him in
the last years of his life realised that "his strict discipline as
organiser and head of a team, his inflexibility which at times appeared
inhuman as far as relationships with others were concerned, was only a
way, the shortest way, to reach important results which often only he
could see. Once this need had been satisfied, he showed his true face
in human contact with everybody: young and old, scholars at all stages
of their careers forcing himself to adapt to various intellectual
level and to the various needs of the day which were ever different to
his own, particularly those of young scholars who ``instead of
buying a calculator" as he did when he was young, ``bought a
car" [1, p.8].


====References====
{|
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|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|   [1] Benedetti, C. (1965). Ricordando Corrado Gini, ''Rivista di Politica Economica\/'' '''54''', 3-9. (The main human characteristics  of Gini are outlined shortly after his death). 
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|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|   [2] Benedetti, C. (1984). A proposito del centenario della nascita di Corrado Gini, ''Metron\/'' '''42'''(1/2), 3-19. (A careful analysis is carried out of a very original contribution on the theory of index numbers known as ``Gini's identities''). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|3}}||valign="top"|   [3] Castellano, V. (1965). Corrado Gini: A Memoir, {\em Metron\/} '''24''', 3-84. (A broad report of Gini's scientific activity is provided as is his complete bibliography). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|4}}||valign="top"|   [4] de Finetti, B. (1966). La probabilit&aacute; secondo Gini nei rapporti can la concezione soggettivistica, ''Metron\/'' '''25''', 85-88. (The contract points and differences between Gini's interpretation of probability and the subjective one are shown). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|5}}||valign="top"|   [5] Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1966). Further thoughts on Corrado Gini's Delusioni dell'Econometria, ''Metron\/'' '''25''', 265-279. (The perplexity of Gini concerning the abuse of formal mathematical aspects in Econometrics is discussed and studied in depth). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|6}}||valign="top"|   [6] Giorgi, G. M. (1990). Bibliographic Portrait of the Gini Concentration Index, ''Metron\/'' '''48''', 183-221. (The main feature of the genesis, evolution and topical interest of the Gini inequality measure are stressed through critical analysis of 385 selected references). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|7}}||valign="top"|   [7] Giorgi, G. M. (1996). Encounters with the Italian Statistical School: A Conversation with Carlo Benedetti, ''Metron\/'', '''54'''(3/4), 3-23. (Gini's scientific and human characteristics are, inter alia, outlined by a conversation with an ex-collaborator of Gini). 
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|valign="top"|{{Ref|8}}||valign="top"|   [8] Leti, G. (1996). ''L'ISTAT e il Consiglio Superiore di Statistica dal 1926 al 1945'', Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, Annali di Statistica, vol. VIII (series X), Rome. (The history of the Central Institute of Statistics from 1926 to 1945 is analysed in depth).
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Reprinted with permission from
Christopher Charles Heyde and Eugene William Seneta (Editors),
Statisticians of the Centuries, Springer-Verlag Inc., New York, USA.

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