6 ms·

Academia as a d-index measuring contest

30 points by surprisetalk 14d ago

vinaigrette 9d ago
Interesting article and methodology. I wish you could play with the ranking features to see how the ranking evolves. I didn't know Kevin Munger. You could definitely seen regarding his field and publications why he would weight 25% of the score to the methodology citations though. Which is partly why his index is very flawed, seeing how qualitative endeavors would be squashed (Qualitative methodologies being very dependant on context). Maybe it does bridge a gap between disciplines that are quantitatively oriented ; STEM and social sciences. The humanities would be nowhere though. It does beg the question of rankings to begin with ... A dean should know better than to statsmaxx (note the irony).
- evolarjun 9d ago
  I thought it was fairly obvious the author was trying to point out the issue with quantitative rankings by setting up the stats to juice his score. It would be fun to play with the stats and figure out how to make yourself come out on top though. Unfortunately I'm not in political science, so it's not much good to me.
0x20cowboy 9d ago
It’s the l33t code of academia.
jll29 9d ago
Regarding "research.com", which is linked from the article: this is weird - some random observations...: • Donald E. Knuth, the most eminent computer scientist alive, ranked 92nd (!) in computer science - seems off by about two orders of magnitde. • Noam A. Chomsky, of whom some say he is the most-cited scholar alive (on the level of Aristotle), ranked seventh in the US. He gave theoretical computer science the Chomsky hierarchy and the Chomsky Normal Form, he has been called the "father of modern linguistics" (Hewbrew morphology, generative grammars, competence-performance distinction, Universal grammar, government & binding theory, the review of Skinner's book that single-handedly destroyed behaviorism, the 'minimalist' program, ...), in politology he is a long-standing and perhaps the most ardent and vocal critic of US foreign policy, supporter of Palestine (being a Jew himself), and in communications and media studies his book (with Herman) "manufactoring Consent" is a field-defining classic. - https://research.com/u/noam-chomsky https://research.com/u/noam-chomsky • regarding school rankings, in Germany, KIT (Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology) seems missing entirely, a top place in CS research.
stafford_beer 8d ago
https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-the-k-index https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-t... author here -- the follow-up post explains the point...it's an existence proof, that a metric exists which ranks me first....which doesn't mean that we have to care about that metric, but it does mean that we shouldn't be taking any metrics for granted as "real"

30 points by surprisetalk 14d ago

Interesting article and methodology. I wish you could play with the ranking features to see how the ranking evolves. I didn't know Kevin Munger. You could definitely seen regarding his field and publications why he would weight 25% of the score to the methodology citations though. Which is partly why his index is very flawed, seeing how qualitative endeavors would be squashed (Qualitative methodologies being very dependant on context). Maybe it does bridge a gap between disciplines that are quantitatively oriented ; STEM and social sciences. The humanities would be nowhere though. It does beg the question of rankings to begin with ... A dean should know better than to statsmaxx (note the irony).

evolarjun 9d ago
I thought it was fairly obvious the author was trying to point out the issue with quantitative rankings by setting up the stats to juice his score. It would be fun to play with the stats and figure out how to make yourself come out on top though. Unfortunately I'm not in political science, so it's not much good to me.

0x20cowboy 9d ago

It’s the l33t code of academia.

jll29 9d ago

Regarding "research.com", which is linked from the article: this is weird - some random observations...: • Donald E. Knuth, the most eminent computer scientist alive, ranked 92nd (!) in computer science - seems off by about two orders of magnitde. • Noam A. Chomsky, of whom some say he is the most-cited scholar alive (on the level of Aristotle), ranked seventh in the US. He gave theoretical computer science the Chomsky hierarchy and the Chomsky Normal Form, he has been called the "father of modern linguistics" (Hewbrew morphology, generative grammars, competence-performance distinction, Universal grammar, government & binding theory, the review of Skinner's book that single-handedly destroyed behaviorism, the 'minimalist' program, ...), in politology he is a long-standing and perhaps the most ardent and vocal critic of US foreign policy, supporter of Palestine (being a Jew himself), and in communications and media studies his book (with Herman) "manufactoring Consent" is a field-defining classic. - https://research.com/u/noam-chomsky https://research.com/u/noam-chomsky • regarding school rankings, in Germany, KIT (Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology) seems missing entirely, a top place in CS research.

stafford_beer 8d ago

https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-the-k-index https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-t... author here -- the follow-up post explains the point...it's an existence proof, that a metric exists which ranks me first....which doesn't mean that we have to care about that metric, but it does mean that we shouldn't be taking any metrics for granted as "real"