The Corporation has made its first appointments to the newly-formed Department of Statistics, Charles F. Mosteller, chairman of the Department, announced.

The three men named were William G. Cochran, as professor of Statistics; John W. Pratt, as assistant professor; and Howard Raiffa, associate professor.

Cochran comes to Harvard from Johns Hopkins University, where he was chairman of the Department of Biostatistics. Educated at Glasgow and Cambridge Universities, he has also done work at Princeton. Cochran is an expert in sample surveys and the design of experiments, especially in the fields of agriculture and medicine.

A Princeton graduate, Pratt was formerly in the department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. He is known for his work on probability theory and classical statistics.

Raiffa has become a member of both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Business School. He was formerly an assistant professor at Columbia and has coauthored a book, published last week, entitled Games Theory and Decision Theory.

Mosteller said that the new department, located in the Reliance Bank Building, will submit a petiton to the Committee on Educational Policy in November, requesting an undergraduate concentration program in Statistics. He also expects a fourth appointment to the department will be made soon.