Born: 22 April 1934, Estonia
Died: NA
Country most active: Estonia
Also known as: Ene–Margit Humal
This biography, written by J J O’Connor and E F Robertson, has been republished with permission from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Ene-Margit Tiit is an Estonian mathematician who was the first president of the Estonian Statistical Society.
The Estonian Statistical Society was founded on the 30 September 1992 at a meeting held in the Conference Hall of the Tartu University Library. At that meeting Ene-Margit Tiit was elected as president. The aims of the Society were established, the most important being to provide a forum for contacts between statisticians working in different areas.
Let us give some details about Ene-Margit Tiit who was born on 22 April 1934 in Tartu, Estonia. Her father was the mathematician Arnold Humal. She attended school in Tallinn, graduating in 1952, and then studied at the University of Tartu, being awarded her first degree in 1957. She studied for her doctorate advised by Gunnar Kangro (1913-1975), who was an expert in summation theory and held the Chair of Mathematical Analysis at the University of Tartu. She was awarded her doctorate in 1963. Appointed to the University of Tartu, she taught there and published on mathematical statistics, population sciences, sociology and anthropology.
In 1995 a new Council was elected: Ene-Margit Tiit was re-elected President for three years; Ülo Randaru, Helina Vigla and Reet Malbe were elected Vice-Directors of the Statistical Office; Villem Tamm, Tonu Kollo and Ebu Tamm were elected as Ordinary Council Members.
The main aim of the Estonian Statistical Society has been the integration of people working in different areas of statistics. In order to achieve this aim, a series of national one- and two-days conferences has been organized. Here is the details of some of these conferences in 1995-97.
23-24 March 1995, in Tartu. Statistics in Social Sciences (24 reports, about 60 participants).
19-20 September 1995, in Tallinn. Official Statistics (18 reports, about 100 participants). The general meeting of Estonian Statistical Society was also held on this occasion.
3-8 June 1996, in Tartu. Tartu Conference on Computational Statistics and Statistical Education. A workshop on Statistics at School was also held (co-organised with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, University of Tartu) (40 reports, about 80 participants, including 35 foreign guests from 19 countries). The working language of the conference was English. During the workshop the reports and discussions were interpreted.
18 November 1996, in Tallinn. Statistics and Quality (20 reports, about 200 participants).
17-18 April 1997, in Rakvere. Medical Statistics and Registers (16 reports and about 70 participants).
Full reports of these conferences have been published in the Journal of Estonian Statistical Society, published twice a year. The Society began publication of the Eesti Statistikaseltsi Teabevihik (Journal of Estonian Statistical Society) in 1993. This journal contains reports of the national one- and two-days conferences run by the Society. Ene-Margit Tiit writes [2]:-
… the Estonian Statistical Society was founded [in 1992] and since then has publish a journal twice a year. Different issues are devoted to different special topics: medical statistics, quality design, statistical education, statistics in life sciences, software, insurance, econometrics, official statistics etc. Almost all papers have been written in Estonian. One aim of this journal is to develop the Estonian statistical vocabulary.