The Indian Statistical Service syllabus is the widest statistics syllabus in the country that is also fixed. Every state degree board writes its own; every university writes its own MSc; every commission writes its own paper. The ISS list sits above all of them, and almost every topic any of them asks for appears somewhere on it. So this site maps itself against the ISS syllabus once, and any other syllabus can be read through that map.
All four Statistics papers are mapped below, 147 syllabus lines in total. Each line is reproduced as prescribed, pointed at the page here that teaches it, and graded for depth. Where nothing here teaches it, the line says so.
Probability, Statistical Methods, Numerical Analysis, Computer Application and Data Processing.
35 lines · 23 deep · 5 brief · 7 not here · 80% covered
Linear Models, Statistical Inference and Hypothesis Testing, Official Statistics.
27 lines · 18 deep · 5 brief · 4 not here · 85% covered
Sampling Techniques, Econometrics, Applied Statistics.
30 lines · 15 deep · 10 brief · 5 not here · 83% covered
Operations Research and Reliability, Demography and Vital Statistics, Survival Analysis and Clinical Trial, Quality Control, Multivariate Analysis, Design and Analysis of Experiments, Computing with C and R.
55 lines · 36 deep · 9 brief · 10 not here · 82% covered
| Subject | Maximum marks | Time allowed |
|---|---|---|
| General English | 100 | 3 hrs. |
| General Studies | 100 | 3 hrs. |
| Statistics-I (Objective) | 200 | 2 hrs. |
| Statistics-II (Objective) | 200 | 2 hrs. |
| Statistics-III (Descriptive) | 200 | 3 hrs. |
| Statistics-IV (Descriptive) | 200 | 3 hrs. |
“Statistics I & II will be of Objective Type Questions (80 questions with maximum marks of 200 in each paper) to be attempted in 120 minutes.”
“Statistics III and IV will be of Descriptive Type having Short Answer/ Small Problems Questions (50%) and Long Answer and Comprehension problem questions (50%). At least one Short Answer and One Long Answer Question from each section is compulsory. In Statistics-IV, there will be SEVEN Sections in the paper. Candidates have to choose any TWO Sections out of them. All Sections will carry equal marks.”
Examination Notice No. 07/2026-IES/ISS, dated 11.02.2026 — Appendix-I, Scheme of Examination, and Section-II, Standard and SyllabiThat table is quoted, not remembered. It is reproduced from the notification named under it, and from nowhere else. Marks, timings and the number of sections change between notifications, so read the current official notice for the year you are sitting and treat this page as being about the statistics.
“The candidates will be expected to illustrate theory by facts, and to analyse problems with the help of theory. They will be expected to be particularly conversant with Indian problems in the field(s) of Economics/Statistics.”
Examination Notice No. 07/2026-IES/ISS, dated 11.02.2026 — Appendix-I, Scheme of Examination, and Section-II, Standard and SyllabiPapers III and IV are written by hand, and that sentence is why a brief grade is not good enough for them. Recognising Horvitz–Thompson in a list of four options is an objective-paper skill; deriving its variance and then saying what the estimate means for the survey in front of you is a descriptive-paper skill. Where a line below is graded brief and sits in Paper III or IV, treat it as work still to do.
deep a full unit page here, with the derivation worked out and problems solved step by step — enough to answer a descriptive paper, not just recognise the term. brief covered, but at exam-summary level: the definition, the formula and a worked example, without the derivation. not here nothing on this site teaches it. It is named rather than quietly skipped, because a map that hides its holes only tells you about them in the hall.
26 of the 147 lines have nothing behind them. They are listed here together, paper by paper, because this list is what gets built next — in that order, roughly, by how many other syllabuses also ask for them.
Paper I — 7 lines.
Paper II — 4 lines.
Paper III — 5 lines.
Paper IV — 10 lines.
Take your own syllabus a line at a time and find the nearest ISS line above. The destination is the same page either way, because the statistics is the same — a state degree board asking for stratified sampling and the ISS asking for stratified sampling want the same derivation, at different depths. What differs is how far down the page you need to read, and the depth column tells you that. The two places this breaks down are worth knowing: ISS Paper I asks for numerical analysis, which most statistics degrees do not, and ISS Paper II asks for official statistics at a level no degree syllabus reaches. Both are in the work queue above.
The other maps on this site — CSIR NET and the UGC NET units — point at the same pages, so a correction to a proof reaches every map at once.
← Back to Statistics for Examinations
The courses this exam’s map sends you to, in learning order — 33 of them. Each is listed because the map links into it, not because it was judged relevant, so a course missing here is one no line of this syllabus points at.