Chuprov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich

Chuprov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich

 

Born Feb. 6 (18), 1874, in Mosal’sk, in what is now Kaluga Oblast; died Apr. 19, 1926, in Geneva. Russian statistical theorist; founder of the modern system of teaching statistics. Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917), member of the International Statistical Institute, corresponding member of the Royal Economic Society and Royal Statistical Society in London. Son of A. I. Chuprov.

A. A. Chuprov graduated from the faculty of physics and mathematics of Moscow University in 1896 and studied economic sciences in Germany in 1901. His study of Marxist philosophy had a profound influence on the formation of his materialist views. From 1902 to 1917, Chuprov headed the department of statistics at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. He organized a seminar on statistics that trained many Russian statisticians; the participants in the seminar came to be known as Chuprovtsy. In 1917, Chuprov emigrated.

In his dissertation Essays on the Theory of Statistics (1909), Chuprov developed a number of original ideas on causality, probability, and the law of large numbers. His scientific work was concerned primarily with problems and methods of the stochastic (probabilistic) theory of statistics, which he attempted to place on a materialist foundation. He fought against the Machism, German neo-Kantianism, and American neopositivism that had crept into the theory. Chuprov contrasted these schools of thought to the ideas of the Russian scholars P. L. Chebyshev and A. A. Markov, in particular their method of mathematical expectations.

WORKS

Ocherki po teorii statistiki. Moscow, 1959.
Voprosy statistiki. Moscow, 1960.
Osnovnye problemy teorii korreliatsii. Moscow, 1960.
“K teorii stabil’nosti statisticheskikh riadov.” In the collection O teorii dispersii. Compiled by N. S. Chetverikov. Moscow, 1966.
“Iskhodnaia zadacha matematicheskoi teorii priemov statisticheskogo issledovaniia sviazei mezhdu dvumia sluchainymi peremennymi.” In the collection Primenenie metodov korreliatsii v ekonomicheskikh issledovaniiakh. Moscow, 1969.
“Iskhodnaia zadacha matematicheskoi teorii priemov statisticheskogo issledovaniia sviazei mezhdu tremia sluchainymi peremennymi.” In the collection Primenenie metodov korreliatsii v ekonomicheskikh issledovaniiakh. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCE

Karpenko, B. I. “Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ A. A. Chuprova.” Uch. zap. po statistike AN SSSR, 1957, vol. 3.

B. I. KARPENKO