18/01/2026
The remarkable HG Wells, yes, the same gent who had written The Time Machine in 1895, had written in his 1903 book Mankind in the Making that "The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex worldwide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write."
That was some 120 years ago!
Eminent statistician Samuel Wilks, in his 1951 presidential address to the American Statistical Association paraphrased Wells very succinctly when he said that "statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write"!
Well, that day has crept upon us.
Many of the machine learning techniques - PCA for one - were developed more than a hundred years ago, but came into prominence only in the last fifty years or so when computing power came of age!
Statistics is a fundamental science, and one needs to understand this subject well before getting into Machine Learning and AI.
We're happy to announce the 20th batch of our 15-hr flagship program Statistical Fundamentals of Data Science Part-1 (SFDS-01): Basic Statistics with R and MS Excel in the first three weekends of Feb 26. Here are the details:
Dates: 7-8, 14-15 and 21-22 Feb 2026
Timings: 1100-1330 IST
Medium: Google Meet
Fees: INR 5000, early bird discount available till EOD 21 Feb 26
Link: https://learning.ekaagra.com/courses/statistical-fundamentals-of-data-science-part-1-sfds-01/
Please do not use the above link if you wish to avail the discount for students and teachers as specified below; write to [email protected] for more details.
Students from class 11 to those pursuing a Master's degree or equivalent IN INDIA get a FLAT 50% off, while teachers in schools and colleges IN INDIA get 25% off. OF course, you need to furnish your ID.
Certificates are not awarded as a matter of right, you need to complete an open book assignment.
