John Hooper (Irish statistician)

John Hooper (26 January 1878 – 29 December 1930) was an Irish statistician who served as the first director of statistics for the Irish Free State, starting in 1923.

Biography

John Hooper was born at 1 Anglesea Place, Cork city, son of politician and journalist John Hooper (1846–1897) and his wife Mary Jane Buckley, and went to school at the Christian Brothers in Cork and the O'Connell School in Dublin. In 1898, he got a BA (with first class honours) in mathematics from the Royal University of Ireland in Dublin. He joined the civil service, and worked for a while at the Office of the Postmaster-General in London.[1]

In 1902, he returned to Dublin and joined the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction of Ireland (DATII), specifically the Statistics and Intelligence Branch. By 1917, he had risen to the rank of superintendent of this branch, and in 1920 he presented two papers at the inaugural Conference of British Empire Statisticians in London.

A few years later, the provisional government of the Free State combined DATII and the Department of the Ministry of Labour to form the new Department of Industry and Commerce. Thus, in 1923, Hooper became the first Director of Statistics in the country by being appointed head of the Statistics Branch of this new department.[2] In this role, he led the country's statistical initiatives in its early years, but he died of pneumonia in 1930 at the age of 52.[1]

Honors and awards

Just before he died in 1930 he was elected as a member of the prestigious International Statistical Institute (ISI).[1] There had been plans for him to receive an honorary Doctor of Economical Science from the National University of Ireland in recognition of his leadership and service. A medal for school children is awarded each year in his honour by the Central Statistics Office in Ireland, based on a poster competition.[3]

gollark: Wow, that's very wrong of you, making you a wrong person.
gollark: Too bad, consume bees.
gollark: This is NOT true. I have not in any way been sponsored by pizza companies. There have been no advertising agreements whatsoever with any companies producing pizza or otherwise to have me subliminally advertise pizza, as my profile picture is not a pizza. Since it is not a pizza, this is obviously not pizza advertisement whatsoever. No monetary exchanges or otherwise have occurred with companies engaged in pizza production for any reason relating to my profile picture. You are clearly engaged in libel and attempting to discredit my non-pizza-advertising status. It is IN NO WAY subliminal pizza advertising because I DO NOT work for pizza companies in any form. It's not pizza. There were no deals, under-the-table or otherwise, with pizza companies. No pizza companies pay for any kind of subliminal advertising involving me. People make that mistake, but I am not working for pizza companies doing subliminal advertising; that is not in any way what I am doing. I am NOT being sponsored by ANY pizza companies to display subliminal pizza advertising OF ANY KIND. Pizza companies have NO AFFILIATION with me in ANY FORM.
gollark: That sure is a statement.
gollark: Well, as they say, languages are defined by use kind of sort of.

References
  1. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Statistics Division John Hooper BA (1923-1930)
  2. A History of Irish Economic Thought edited by Thomas Boylan, Renee Prendergast, and John Turner; Taylor & Francis (October 2014), p. 250
  3. Central Statistics Office of Ireland: International Statistical Literacy Poster : John Hooper
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.