Suomen Tilastoseura Finnish Statistical Society FSS
The Executive Committee
President: Pekka Pere
Vice president: Ari Jaakola
Secretary: Roope Rihtamo
Treasurer: Tuuli Kauppala
Also part of the Board: Arvi Tolvanen, Reija Helenius, Mika Gissler, Jyrki Möttönen, and Tommi Härkänen, and three additional deputy members: Elisa Falck, Tapani Linnaluoto, and Tommi Mäklin.
About the Society
The Finnish Statistical Society was established in 1920, soon after Finland declared independence in 1917. The Society is one of the oldest scientific societies in Finland. One of the first initiatives of the Society was to organise a group of Finnish scientific societies to ask Jarl Lindeberg to write a textbook on mathematical statistics in 1924. Lindeberg, who had just published his famous condition for the Central limit theorem to hold, took the task and wrote the first textbook in mathematical statistics in Finnish.
A major reason for establishing the Society was to provide a forum for statistically-minded professionals to meet. It is still important. Present activities of the Society include organising seminars, especially the Statistical Days, which bring together Finnish statisticians and alike. The Society publishes a yearbook documenting the activities of the past year. A separate publication series of the Society exists for other publication purposes. Among the most influential publications of the series have been the dictionaries of statistical terms.
News from the Society
The Finnish Statistical Society organized Statistical Days 2024 at Aalto University in Espoo on June 3rd. The main speaker of the event was Professor Ryan Martin from North Carolina State University, who lectured an intensive course on statistical inference at the Finnish Summer School in Statistics and Stochastics in Lammi the week before the Statistical Days. In addition to Martin, presentations were given by Professor Pauliina Ilmonen as well as three presentations each in the 'Research Showcase' and 'New Trends in Statistics' sessions. The former presented new statistical research conducted in Finland, while the latter focused on practices in the field of statistics by various authorities. More information is available here: link.
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The Finnish Statistical Society organized the annual Statistical Days conference on June 9th to 10th, 2025, at the University of Tampere. It was an honour to welcome Professor Jörn-Steffen Pischke (London School of Economics) as the keynote speaker, along with 9 other brilliant speakers. The Society is also currently hosting a national postgraduate course at the University of Tampere on the topic of Causal Inference lectured by Professor Juha Karvanen (University of Jyväskylä).
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The Finnish Statistical Society organized on 15 Sep 2025 an afternoon seminar "Back from holiday" under the auspices of Professor Emeritus Juha Alho. This afternoon seminar was entitled Statistical problems in assessing Finland's carbon balance and discussed challenges in light of the 2035 carbon neutrality goal. Recent data revisions have made forest carbon sink estimates more pessimistic, sparking debate about logging levels. From a statistical and economic perspective, the focus is on uncertainties in carbon sink assessment, risks of misestimation, the role of human influence, stochastic variation in natural processes, and how to weigh benefits across generations. The goal is to provide a foundation for rational decision-making on Finland’s carbon neutrality target. More information is available here.