CSRankings’ Liao Shumin may want to fluff her or his calligraphy brush for the next go round; otherwise, an opportunity to do some holiday coal mining in Haerwusu may present itself. “Holiday greetings from Inner Mongolia” may next year’s follow up story.
How to Be Numero Uno in AI Even Though the List Has a Math Error and Is Incomplete
December 24, 2019
DarkCyber spotted an interesting college ranking. Unlike some of the US college guides which rank institutions of higher learning, the league table published by Yicai Global takes a big data approach. (Please, keep in mind that US college rankings are not entirely objective. There are niceties like inclusions, researcher bias, and tradition which exert a tiny bit of magnetic pull on these scoreboards.)
According to “Six Chinese Colleges Place in CSRankings’ Top Ten AI List”, the US and other non-Chinese institutions are simply not competitive. Note that “six” in the headline.
How were these interesting findings determined? The researchers counted the number of journal articles published by faculty at the institutions in the sample. DarkCyber noted this statement about the method:
CSRankings is an authoritative global ranking of computer science higher educational institutions compiled by the AMiner team at Tsinghua. Its grading rests entirely on the number of scholarly articles faculty members publish.
The more papers—whether good, accurate, or science fiction—was the sole factor. There you go. Rock solid research.
But let’s look at the rankings:
- Top AI institution in the world: Tsinghua University.
- Not listed. Maybe Carnegie Mellon University
- Peking University
- University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Not listed. Maybe MIT?
- Nanyang Technological University
- Not listed. Maybe Stanford, the University of Washington, or UCal Berkeley?
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University
- Not listed. Maybe Cambridge University
- Not listed. DarkCyber would plug in École nationale supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne whose graduates generally stick together or maybe the University of Michigan located in the knowledge wonderland that is Ann Arbor?
Notice that there are five Chinese institutions in the Top 10 list. Yeah, I know the source document said “six.” But, hey, this is human intelligence, not artificial intelligence at work.
Who’s in the Top 10. Apparently Carnegie Mellon and MIT were in the list, but that’s fuzzy. The write up references another study which ranked “all area” schools. Does MIT teach literature or maybe ethics?
To sum up: Interesting source, wonky method, and incomplete listing. Plus, there that weird six but just five thing.
Stephen E Arnold, December 24, 2019
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