Jakob Nielsen is a web 'usability' expert; but sometimes he comes across as a web usability fundamentalist. His latest, on The Top Ten Design Mistakes [of weblogs], is a good example of what I mean.
P.Z. Myers has done a reasonably thorough fisking of this piece; Bill Tozier, on the other hand, gives his take on one of the 'mistakes' pointed out by Nielsen.
... a [besieged] castle - those on the outside want to get in, and those on the inside want to get out. [source]
Actually, I got the quote from a friend at our lunch table. The link to the online source is (a) to indicate where the quote comes from [it's a popular Chines exhortation], and (b) to point to the fact that people in social sciences and humanities can put in interesting quotes in their scholarly articles. I can only envy them.
The horrible incident at the Bangalore Railway Station involving an alumnus of IT-BHU and IIM-L refuses to go away quietly. The latest is a very strange twist on which Animesh has a post. Nimish, the victim of the brutality at the railway station, has a blog post on this twist.
Animesh urges us all to express our outrage through an e-mail campaign. Please do visit his post.
[Thanks to Animesh for the e-mail alert]
GRE General Test, the exam (some would say The Exam) that you need to take if you wish to get into Masters and Doctoral programs in US universities, is changing. The main change is that it will become (starting about one year from now) some 60 % longer than it is now, but the overall pattern remains roughly the same. The remaining changes are mostly administrative. I really wouldn't call it 'revamping', but NYTimes would.
GATE, on the other hand, is The Exam to take if you wish to pursue a Masters program in engineering in any of the leading universities or institutes; in the sciences, it is one of a set of exams that a student can take. Unlike the GRE General Test that tests you on general skills (verbal, quantitative and analytical reasoning), GATE is subject specific. Another difference is that GATE is offered only once a year. The 2006 edition of GATE will be held on 12 February 2006, and the issue of application forms has already begun.
Until 2004 (or, was it 2003?) GATE had two sections, one with multiple choice questions, and another with questions that require longish answers. Many people -- including me -- felt that the entire exam should be converted into one with just multiple-choice questions. We used to cite GRE General Test as a good model of such an exam. Finally, GATE administrators announced the conversion to the all multiple-choice pattern. Ironically, this decision was made at a time when the GRE administrators announced that they were going the other way! As many of you probably know, the present-day GRE requires the candidates to write a short essay.
Frankly, I prefer the all multiple-choice version.
The IIPM-induced intensity in blogospheric activity has produced a few absolutely wonderful gems of the serious kind. Let me just point to a couple.
Satya, over at Education in India, examines the way forward from here. He points out, rightly, that UGC's laudable regulations regarding advertisements for higher ed institutions cannot be extended to places like IIPM since they do not have UGC recognition, and nor are they seeking one. He suggests that advertising industry, which follows a model of self-regulation, could ensure certain norms to be followed by ads for educational institutions.
Codelust has some very good advice for bloggers. Here is the key stuff.
[...] [O]ne thing that I have seen time and again is that people always confuse freedom of expression with the freedom from responsibilities.There is this feeling that having the browser between you and the reader somehow empowers you to say anything and then not have any responsibility towards what you just said.
[...]
Freedom of expression is not being able to say whatever you want to say. Freedom of expression is being able to say what you want to say, knowing fully well the consequences of your actions. Freedom of expression does not mean that people won't react to what you just said. In a free country, people have an equally valid right to react as it is valid for you to express yourself. Freedom of expression does not guarantee that blogging being the next earth shattering revolution will protect you from hooliganisitc behaviour by the bad boys when you rub them the wrong way. Freedom of expression does not mean that blogging is exempt from the normal rules. Wake up, it is about time you smelled the coffee.
In addition to these two blog posts, Sajan Venniyoor of the Hoot, a media watchdog, has a fair and balanced take on the fight between IIPM and the bloggers. Here is a key quote from this story, titled "David and Goliath -- a virtual parable".
If blogs are to be taken seriously, they should live up to the standards of accountability and reliability of the mainstream media that they so deplore.
IIPM has magically produced a page listing (only partially) its faculty members. Here is the main page. Here is the page for permanent faculty. As of now, only the Economics and Information Systems faculty are listed.
I am sure faculty lists for the other departments will eventually appear. This will enable us to really test how many of their claims about their faculty are true.
Some quick impressions, though.
All this shows that IIPM has not bothered to put together all this information in a coherent well-thought out fashion. They are only reacting to all the blogospheric criticisms, and they are reacting badly.
At best, this page is incorrect, and incomplete, and we can only hope that it will be made better. On the other hand, it may be a true reflection of reality!
Via P.Z. Myers' Pharyngula, we learn that last October 9th was the National Porn Sunday in the US. Do head out there, because he gives you links to many of his earlier posts that extol the virtue of wild sex.
A little off-topic, but still: Onion has this great news story about how a string theorist tells his wife that he can explain everything to his wife (and fails).
In all the heat and dust raised by a certain institution's lawsuit threats, it is easy to get too mired in what a friend of mine would refer to as 'heaviosity'. I think it is time to free up one's mind, and what better way to do it than read some fun stuff, and parodies in particular. Of course, it is difficult to out-parody the very parody that is at the root of the recent spike in blogging.
Without much ado, let me just direct you to two dazzling gems written by Gawker. By the way, can anyone confirm the rumour that Gawker's day job is with the Onion?
Update: Here is one more by Gawker. This makes it three in a row. Another piece by another great writer, the GreatBong.
Update 2 (16 October 2005): Kitabkhana juoins the fun with a great post.
All the blog discussions (and other developments) about IIPM are being tracked by the excellent Desi Pundit team. This is the place to go to if you want the latest.
In this post, let me start with some questions.
First, there are umpteen shady 'educational' institutions in India. Bloggers don't go after them all. Why?
IIPM may actually be a decent institution (not great, not good, but passable). Again, there are 1029 MBA programs in the country, and by definition, all of them cannot be in the top 20, or 50, 200. Bloggers do not target all of them. Why?
The original JAM article was not about how lousy the institution was, or how bad the faculty were, or how bad the infrastructure was, or any of these things. Its main theme was just one thing. What is it?
The answer, clearly, is Truth in Advertising. Since some people think that this is an oxymoron, let me rephrase it. Lies in Advertising.
When people see flashy (full page!) ads for an institution that make wild claims about how great it is, they feel intuitively that there probably is something deeply wrong with it. Instead of leaving things to such gut feelings, JAM just went ahead and tried to find evidence for or against the claims made in IIPM's ads. IMHO, it did the job it is meant to do: top class journalism. But, my central point is this: the JAM article was more about truth in advertising, than about IIPM. I am absolutely sure they would have done the same with any other institution that advertised in a similarly flashy way.
I think we have to keep the focus on this theme. But how?
There are many things individuals in right positions (I didn't say high positions -- though that would help!) can do to unearth some more evidence. Sure, it will require some work -- but not necessarily too much.
Let me point to at least two possibilities from the ad for IIPM carried by yesterday's ET. Here are some of the claims in the ad.
First, it lists the companies that took part in their 2005 placement season. The long list has many companies. I am listing them at the end of the post. People working in these companies can find out through their internal channels if this claim is true. BTW, the JAM piece has actually done this fact-checking with some companies; it's an eye-opener. But, it has not done an exhaustive checking (nor does it really have to). Interestingly, McKinsey which figured in earlier ads (and JAM wrote about) does not figure in this ad!
In addition to what JAM did, individuals can certainly alert their HR about IIPM's falling reputation, and about the need to get their companies' names off from IIPM's ads. If they are upto it, they may even take it up with the Press Council or any other organization that deals with complaints about truth in advertising.
Second, the ad claims that IIPM students are so great that 'no wonder they have won the maximum awards amongst all B-schools in India including 1st Prize in Debates at ...' There are so many institutions in this list (which appears at the end of this post) that you would think that IIPM students did nothing else! This again can be checked by people studying in these institutions. [I do not want to be misunderstood here. I am not here to denigrate or attack IIPM's students. I just think that this statement in the IIPM ad may not check out with facts.]
Well, I did some fact checking with whatever resources I have (dial-up connection!). Here is the gist of what I did. Any academic institution aspiring to greatness would want to advertise how absolutely fantastic its faculty are. Does the IIPM ad do that? Certainly! It says:
IIPM's permanent faculty (250 plus) goes regularly to teach in leading B-schools across the globe. They are the best in the country in terms of Industry Interfaces, Consulting & Communication skills. IIPM faculty undertakes the maximum amount of EDPs for corporates in India. [emphasis in the original]
Doesn't it make you go "Wow! These guys must be GOOD!". If they are so good, one ought to get a lot of information about them (their names, their qualifications, where they got their degrees from, where they worked prior to joining IIPM, and a list of their publications -- with soft copies of some of them, if possible) from the IIPM website, right? That way, One is able to judge for oneself how much of their claim is 'subjectively true'. Well, check out their faculty page. It's empty! [Well, I realize that this situation may change quickly, so go there immediately!] I think this negative result says a lot! If the situation changes, and this page actually gets some content, one can do further fact-checking.
In sum, I suggest that we keep the eye on the ball: Truth in Advertising.
Companies that participated in the 2005 placement at IIPM, according to the ET ad, are: ABN Amro, HSBC, Standard Chartered, ICICI Bank, Citibank, HDFC Bank, ING Vysya, Max New York, Kotak Mahindra, India Bulls, ICICI Prudential, Met Life, TATA AIG, American Express, Citifinancials, GE Money, Asian Paints, Coca Cola, Berger Paints, Oracle, HP, Hutch, GE Consumer Finance, Yahoo, Essar Group, Crisil, Times Money, Bharat Shell, Skoda, Group M, HCL Infinet, Schneider Electric, Evalueserve.com, I gate, Reuters, Shoppers Stop, Bata, Fortis, Hindustan Levers, Deloitte Consulting, Primus Telecom, Oswal Group, NEC, ...
The institutions where IIPM students won 1st prize in debates are: IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kanpur, IIM-Bangalore, BITS-Pilani, IIT-Roorkee, ICFAI-Pune, NMIMS, and JIMS. They also got the best debate team at Symbiosis, ...
[ A quick update to this post ] Through an internal grapevine, I got a link to this New Indian Express story.
[Unfortunately, I am unable to read it, because of a malfunction in the newspaper's registration site; so I am just reporting what the grapevine has reported.]
Apparently, two ticket collectors, one RPF Assistant Sub-Inspector and three RPF constables have been suspended, and a detailed inquiry has been ordered.
If any of you could post the news story's gist in the comments, it would be helpful for everyone. I will greatly appreciate it.
Here is the first paragraph from this NYTimes story:
Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science yesterday for their work in game theory, which explains the choices that competitors make in situations that require strategic thinking.
The Prize in economics has already seen quite a bit of action in blogs. Tyler Cowen has a series of posts; the main one with a lot of personal anecdotes about Schelling is here. The others are here, here, and here. To me, these posts represent the best in blogging: combining news with both general and personal commentary.
Kieran Healy, a sociologist, presents an outsider's perspective.
I am sure there are (and will be) others. If you find anything interesting that you would like to share, please leave a comment. Thanks.
Today's Economic Times carried a small piece on yet another ranking exercise; only this time, it is for technical universities, published by the Times Higher Education Supplement.
IITs apparently are ranked third in this list, up one slot from the fourth position last year. I presume this is the reason it made it to the ET.
Here is the catch. The THES website has nothing on it, as of now. All it offers is 2004 World University Rankings published in November 2004. The 2005 rankings, the website says, will be available soon. May be they have some disaggregated lists showing IITs in the third place under the category of technological universities. Perhaps the print edition is already out, and ET ran with it. The blogosphere doesn't have any discussion of this new rankings list, yet.
If you are interested in the IIPM tag, do read on. If you already know what the issues are (and you probably do), go to the last two paragraphs.
Good academic institutions, like hospitals, never advertise, except when they need to announce some significant event (usually, the start of the admissions season, or faculty recruitment). A corollary is that, anytime you see a flashy ad for a hospital or an academic institution making tall claims, you better watch out. As a great sage once observed, if something is too good to be true, it probably is.
So, a Mumbai based youth magazine went out to find out if there is any truth in what IIPM claimed in its huge, flashy ads, and -- surpise, surprise! -- found that there were quite a few, um, embellishments of truth in those ads. Rashmi Bansal blogged about it a while ago. Many bloggers, including me, have linked to Rashmi's post. We all had a good laugh.
IIPM managers have finally -- a full three months after Rashmi's post! -- picked up the signals in the blogosphere. Now that they know we know, what do they do?
First, their 'students' visit Rashmi's blog and leave filthy and vile comments there, without a care about what their comments say about them and their alma mater. This fact alone alerts us that they are not real students, but hired thugs. Of course, if they are real students, not even the non-existent god can save them! And, second, their legal cell wrote a letter to Gaurav Sabnis (details here) threatening legal action. I hope he stands firm.
Well, this is indeed serious. We should stand by Gaurav and Rashmi. If you write for a newspaper, do please get your newspaper to investigate. As another sage said once, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Finally, if you blog, I urge you to raise this issue in your blog; this sort of a 'tag' is far better than the 23-5 tag that is floating around. If we succeed, this will achieve something of social value.
Let me quickly add that I am not the first one to have begun this 'tag'. Many have already written on it, and DesiPundit and Charu provide a fairly exhaustive list.
[Via Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance]: The faculty of the Department of Law in the University of Chicago now have a blog. Yes, the entire faculty, all of them! This must be the first such group blog.
Take a look at Columbia University's economics faculty list. It has Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Jagdish Bhagwati, and many other big guns. Would you have guessed that this Department has a serious 'faculty crisis'? They went out and hired, not 3 or 4, but -- take a deep breath! -- ten new faculty!
Here is the New York Magazine's report on this amazing story. [Link from Tyler Cowen]
