Laszlo Kiss

* Poprad, July 27, 1910 – † Ann Arbor/USA, October 7, 2000 / statistician, mathematician, university professor, honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the USA he was known as Leslie Kish ; ; During World War I, the family moved to Zilah, but he often spent his summers in Bogács. They emigrated from Romania to the United States of America in 1926. After the sudden death of his father, he took a job, and in 1929 he was employed as a laboratory assistant at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York. From 1930 he pursued advanced mathematics studies at City College in New York, and then in 1937 he went to Spain, where he participated in the Civil War on the side of the Republicans. He returned to America wounded in 1939 and subsequently obtained his diploma in mathematics. From 1940, he was employed first by the Census Bureau in Washington, then by the Department of Agriculture. His task was to plan the samples needed for the data surveys. From 1942 to 1945, he served as a meteorologist during World War II, and then returned to the Census Bureau. In 1947, he was one of the founders of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with economic psychologist György Katona (1901–1981). From 1960 until his retirement (1981), he was a professor of sociology. His research field was primarily statistics. ; He is credited with several methodological innovations in the field of determining representative samples, which, however, go beyond the scope of statistics in their significance, and contributed to the development of economics and sociology, among other social sciences. In order to obtain indicators that were representative of the population from the responses of an optimally sized sample included in the data collection process, he dealt in depth with the elimination of sampling and post-data collection estimation errors. He studied potential sources of error leading to distortions, especially the phenomenon of non-response. He introduced procedures such as regularly repeated rolling samples and the split-panel design (SPD) used in cross-sectional data collection to indicate trend changes in the population. In addition, he developed several keys based on mathematical calculations for the methods of multi-stage sampling, multi-purpose sampling and small-area estimation. He also applied the results of his theoretical work in practice. In 1948, when American public opinion polling companies still used traditional quota sampling, which allowed for the subjectivity of the pollsters, Kiss developed a probability calculation model for proper sampling, and was the only one to predict the re-election of Harry S. Truman as president. In 1985, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him an honorary member, and in 1998, ELTE awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1997, he received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. ; ; Major works: ; Survey sampling, 1965, ; Using cumulated rolling samples to integrated census and survey operations of the Census Bureau: An analysis, review and response, 1981, ; Statistical design for research, 1987 (in Hungarian: Kutatások statisztikai tervezése, 1989), ; Statistical methods for agricultural surveys, 1989, ; Questions/answers (1978–1994) from the Survey Statistician, 1995,