Hi The relationship is markedly nonlinear. Including a nonlinear component (b^2) in multiple regression produces a multiple R of .702. Hence number of Billionaires predicts half of variability in rankings. Or using log(bs) alone produces r = -.66.
However, there is a MAJOR problem with the dataset. Only the top #bs institutions are used, and many institutions with higher rankings are ignored (e.g., usnr for UT Austin is 47). Correct analysis would include Bs and USNR for all the missing institutions. For many of these institutions, Bs would be lower and USNR lower than institutions in dataset, presumably diminishing negative r to a great extent. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> "Mike Palij" <m...@nyu.edu> 29-Aug-09 8:54:13 AM >>> On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:55:59 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: > I hope they are not implying it is an index of how good the school is. Perish the THOUGHT! I am sure that all RIGHT THINKING people would never assess the value of the education that they received simply on the basis of the amount of money such an educational opportunity allowed them to steal, er, to earn. However, since you've raised the issue of what is the relationship between "school quality" and the amount of money the filthiest rich issue of such accumulate, let's try to get you an answer: Below is the list of schools I provided previously, rank ordered on the basis of number of billionaires (B's) they produced and the the U.S. New & World Reports Rank (USNR) reported for 2010; see: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings (1) Harvard (54 B's} (USNR=1.00) (2) Stanford (25 B's) (USNR=4.00) (3) U Penn (18 B's) (USNR=4.00) (4.5) Columbia (16 B's) (USNR=8) (4.5) Yale (16 B's) (USNR=3) (6) MIT (11 B's) (USNR=4) (7.5) Northwestern (10 B's) (USNR=12) (7.5) U Chicago (10 B's) (USNR=8) (10.25) Cornell (9 B's) (USNR=15) (10.25) UC Berkeley (9 B's) (USNR=21) (10.25) U of Southern Cal (9 B's) (USNR=26) (10.25) UT, Austin (9 B's)(USNR=47) and NYU (5 B's) (USNR=32) Entering this data into SPSS, a Pearson r(N=13)= -0.458, p<.06 under the directional hypothesis that there should be a negative correlation between the number of B's produced by an institution and the US News & World Report ranking of the institution. Note: because of the small sample size and restriction of range (e.g., not all institutions that produced B's are used), the obtained Perason r is likely to be an underestimate of the true population rho. (I've tried to attach the SPSS dataset to this post but I don't know if it will go through) So, knowing how many B's an institution produced can be used to predict the U.S. New & World Report ranking given to it which one can interpret as a measure of the quality of the institution (people who disagree with USN's numbers are encouraged to discuss it with them as well as the administrators at your own institution who might use these numbers for recruiting purposes). So, don't be surprised if you hear "No B's? No Mas!" (see the following for one interpretation of "No Mas": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard-Duran_II ) > Wouldn't it be awful to equate money with the quality of the > school (or lack thereof for the B's that dropped out)? Indeed, it would be awful to equate the quality of a school or even the value of human life in terms of filthy lucre nonetheless is it done all of the time. This was most strikingly brought home in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks when the U.S. government tried to figure out how to compensate families who lost family members in the attacks. A simple-minded notion would be to given each family a fixed amount for each family member lost, thus valuing eack life equally. But it occurred to a number of people that such a scheme failed to recognized that we are not all equal, that the janitor who was killed would have earned less in his lifetime than a stock trader in the firm of Cantor Fitzgerald. The "unrealized potential" expressed in terms of the amount of money a person could earn then became the measure of the value of human life. I'll leave to the "true" Christians and the pragmatic capitalists to argue whether this is a reasonable way to guage the value of a human life. > One might be tempted to think that the bottom line in education > is the business/money aspect of education and all that happens is > job training! You must be new to this whole academic teaching thing, right? Consider the following blog entry, grasshopper: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/college_prep As for NYU's peculiar status as producing dropouts that go on to become billionaires (NYU as a knack for doing this in various areas; Woody Allen dropped out of NYU), rumor has it that NYU will take these lemons and make them into lemonade with a new advertising campaign: "NYU! You education will be SO GOOD that even if you drop-out you can still become a BILLIONIARE!" Or something like that. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
