Sankhyā -The Indian Journal of Statistics

6. One striking feature in the Arthasästra is the emphasis on the need of checking and verification by independent agents working in secret without the knowledge of the original enumerators (Chapter XXXV p. 159): Spies under the disguise of householders (grhaPatika cultivators) who shall be deputed by the collector-general for espionage shall ascertain the validity of the accounts (of the vi [...] In the 18th century the new concepts of probability began to be applied to the adjustment of astronomical observations and physical measurements which led to the growth of the theory of errors culminating in the work of Gauss and Laplace. [...] The central concept in the second principle of thermodynamics is again randomness so that the principle of the increase of entropy is recognized as nothing but the increasing degree of randomness of the physical universe. [...] A radical departure had become necessary and took place about a quarter of a century ago in the development of the design of experiments and the analysis of variance under the leadership of R. A. Fisher." He himself has observed: " In 1877 when Sir Francis Calton measured the size of sweet peas in his studies of heredity he found a "regression" of the size of the daughter seed compared to th [...] Rooted as it is in the mathematical theory of the errors of random sampling the idea of precision is from the first in the forefront. The director of the survey plans from the first for a prdetermined and known level of precision; it is a consideration of which he never loses sight; and the precision actually attained subject to well undestood precautions is manifest from the results of