Prof. (Ms) K. S. Bhanu ,
Head, Department of Statistics
Institute of Science, Nagpur (India)
CONVENER (COSMA)
“
NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON STATISTICS AND MATHEMATICS
APPLICATIONS “ (COSMA)
3 rd
AND 4 th
JANUARY 2014
INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE, NAGPUR.)
REPORT
The Department of Statistics in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics of
Institute of Science, Nagpur (India) celebrated the International year of Statistics by organizing a two day “NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON STATISTICS AND MATHEMATICS
APPLICATIONS “ (COSMA) on 3rd and 4th Jan 2014. Dr. K. S. Bhanu, Professor of
Statistics, Institute of Science, Nagpur was the convener of the conference.
Around 250 delegates comprising of Statisticians and Mathematicians belonging to the theoretical and applied fields from all over the country and abroad participated in the deliberations . The delegates comprised of academicians, practicing statisticians, researchers and students pursuing their master’s program in Statistics and Mathematics.
The inaugural function was followed by an inspiring and thought provoking key note address by Dr. T. E. Raghunathan , Chair and Professor of Biostatistics ,School of Public Health,
University of Michigan, USA who spoke at length on “ Mathematics To Mathematical
Statistics To Statistics To Biostatistics: A Personal Journey”.
“The two days deliberations of the conference included a total of eleven invited talks out of which some were delivered at the combined sessions for both Mathematics and Statistics .
On the first day Dr. Srinivas Bhogle, Director, TEOCO software, Bangalore delivered a lucid

talk on Cricket Analytics . In another joint session, Dr.Bikas K Sinha ,Visiting Professor of
Statistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County , USA & former Professor of Indian
Statistical Institute [ISI], Kolkata gave an interesting talk on Group Testing Designs: A
Combinatorial Marvel.
Besides these combined sessions, technical talks Statistics were delivered by Dr.
Chiranjit Mukhopadhyay , Professor of Statistics at the Department of Management Studies,
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore , on Repairable System Reliability Estimation With
Repair Time As A Covariate , Dr Subrata Kundu, Deputy Chair and Associate Professor of
Statistics at the George Washington University, USA on Nonparametric Estimation Of The
Number Of Components Of A Superposition Of Renewal Processes, Dr . M.N.Deshpande,
Retd. Professor of Statistics, Institute of Science, Nagpur on Intransitive Dice, Dr.
V.R.Padmawar, Professor of Statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, on Hartley-
Ross Estimator Revisited, Dr. Srinivasan Balaji , Assistant Professor of Statistics at the George
Washington University, USA, on Limiting distributions of Polya processes and Prof.
B.K.Sinha on On Neyman's Optimum Allocation: A Novel Technique To reckon With.
The technical talks in the Mathematics section were delivered by Prof.S.A.Katre , Head
,Department of Mathematics ,University of Pune , on Cyclotomic polynomials, cyclic codes and MDS codes ,Dr. Repaka Radha from the School of Mathematics and Statistics,
University of Hyderabad on Solutions of some partial differential equations and
Dr.V.M.Sholapurkar , Associate Professor and Head at the Center for Postgraduate Studies in
Mathematics, S. P. College, Pune on Reproducig Kernel Hilbert Spaces and Multiplication
Operators.
There were in all eight paper reading sessions ,five in the Statistics section and three in the Mathematics section . A total of around 60 – 65 papers were presented on both days.
One of the interesting sessions organized during the conference was the ‘ CATCH
THEM YOUNG’ session which was specially organized for the benefit of young students, researchers and faculty members. Around 150 students and other delegates had an interesting interactive session with the experts from the fields of statistics. Dr.Srinivas Bhogle, Dr.Chiranjit
Mukhopadyay , Dr.Srinivasan Balaji and Dr.Subrata Kundu along with Mr.Tarun Shrivastava,
Systems analyst , NIC, Nagpur and an alumnus of the department and Dr. K.S.Bhanu, the convener, held a panel discussion and guided the students on job opportunities in various fields

of both Statistics and Mathematics. Dr. Chiranjit felt that instead of talking about statistical analysis, students should now talk of
‘analytics.”.
People were now talking of BIG data and the statisticians have a bright future. Dr.Balaji guided the students on higher studies in USA.
Students had many questions on various aspects which were well answered by the experts.
Mr.Tarun Shrivastava asked the students to question themselves on whether they were ‘ industry ready’.
Getting a degree wasn’t enough . The students had to be well versed with statistical packages like SAS, R etc. Dr.Bhogle stressed the importance of being equipped with soft skills and communication skills to be in the job market. Dr.Kundu and Dr.Bhanu acted as moderators.
There were plenty of questions from the students on the issue of jobs, making a career in
Mathematics, post doctoral studies in USA, selection of an appropriate topic for pursuing research etc. Delegates who were practicing statisticians also joined in the discussion and guided the students on job opportunities in ICMR, NEERI and other government and private sectors.
A souvenir containing abstracts of invited talks and contributory papers was brought out on the occasion.