cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (Chris Shaw) (03/03/87)
In article <3063@watdcsu.UUCP> (Dave Brewer, SysDesEng, PAMI, UWaterloo) writes: > > In terms of prestige there is no question the American schools far > outrank Canadian schools. Of course prestige is not necessarily > highly correlated with quality, but in most cases at least some > correlation exists. Nonsense. Michigan State (Lansing) outranks (my alma mater) Waterloo on the all-important prestige scale? Gimme one exact Very Large Scale Break! OK, I'll admit that there are more Stanford/Berkeley/CMU/MIT's in the US. Big deal... as I have said before, if you multiplied Canada by 10, you'd get the USA (only better). Imagine if there were 10 U Torontos, 10 Waterloos, 10 McGills, 10 UBC's, 10 U of A's, 10 Dalhousies......... Get it? > And what is NSERC going to say if you say you want to go study at the > "best" institution available ? i.e. Canada has facilities in area x > but the best research is done in the States at institution y. > I would doubt very much that NSERC would be sympathetic to this view, The bottom line with NSERC is that you have to be VERY good before you can write your own ticket. What about all them Rhodes Scholars, eh? Where do THEY go??? (Oxford) Oh Nooooo!!! the UK brain drain! > Try not to become a man >UUCP : {decvax|ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!brewster of success but rather try >Else : Dave Brewer, (519) 886-6657 to become a man of value. > Albert Einstein How about a man who can think? :-) -- Chris Shaw cdshaw@alberta University of Alberta CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !
brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (03/04/87)
>From: cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (Chris Shaw) >> In terms of prestige there is no question the American schools far >> outrank Canadian schools. Of course prestige is not necessarily >> highly correlated with quality, but in most cases at least some >> correlation exists. >Nonsense. Michigan State (Lansing) outranks (my alma mater) Waterloo on the >all-important prestige scale? Gimme one exact Very Large Scale Break! Not knowing Lansing I can't comment, but it will always be possible to choose specific examples where my general comment regarding prestige will be wrong. >OK, I'll admit that there are more Stanford/Berkeley/CMU/MIT's in the US. Crucial admission since I don't think USA without the institutions you mention is a shadow of it's current self. >Big deal... as I have said before, if you multiplied Canada by 10, you'd get >the USA (only better). Imagine if there were 10 U Torontos, 10 Waterloos, >10 McGills, 10 UBC's, 10 U of A's, 10 Dalhousies......... That would be a good, solid, stable system, but I dispute the conclusion that it would be better than the USA. It would still be lacking world class research institutions, if the current state of the universities you mention were used as the prototypes. If instead of taking the current state of Toronto say, and cloning 10 more, we took the current state, and produced 5 improved "super"-clones then I agree with your conclusion. >What about all them Rhodes Scholars, eh? Where do THEY >go??? (Oxford) Oh Nooooo!!! the UK brain drain! The majority return to Canada and become politicians if our current crop of politicians is any example. As an aside, it always seemed to me that this scholarship was given in part for your ability to contribute to Oxfords teams (rowing, soccer, rugby, etc.) and in part for your connections in the English old boys network. I knew of one person from RMC who was offerred the scholarship, but had the offer withdraw after a serious accident meant that he would not be able to participate in any serious athletic events during the tenure of the award. Seeing as this scholarsip is financed from money made by Cecil Rhodes in South Africa at the turn of the century on the backs of black workers, should people who are offerred this scholarship see the situation as a moral dilemna, if so what should they conclude, should the Canadian government disallow this extremely indirect support of apartheid ? Try not to become a man UUCP : {decvax|ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!brewster of success but rather try Else : Dave Brewer, (519) 886-6657 to become a man of value. Albert Einstein
andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (03/04/87)
In article <3077@watdcsu.UUCP> brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (Dave Brewer, SysDesEng, PAMI, UWaterloo) writes: > Seeing as this scholarsip is financed from money made by Cecil Rhodes > in South Africa at the turn of the century on the backs of black > workers, should people who are offerred this scholarship see the > situation as a moral dilemna, if so what should they conclude, should > the Canadian government disallow this extremely indirect support of > apartheid ? These are good questions (amazingly :-)). I don't think you can say whether someone "should" consider a situation to be a moral dilemma. If I were offered a Rhodes scholarship (fat chance) I would see it as such. If enough people felt there was a strong enough connection to discrimination, there might be enough momentum to get the government to disallow it. But I doubt that would happen; the link is just too far removed, unlike (say) goods imported from SA, which many people believe serve to directly support the present discriminatory situation there. America was built to a great extent on the backs of Black slaves, but the connection to present-day America is tenuous enough that I don't boycott American goods. BTW, I happen to think that the comparison made by the Manitoba Native tribe between their situation and the SAfrican "homelands" is EXCELLENT. I'd be the first (well maybe not the very first :-)) to admit that the sanctions issue is motivated to a great extent by faddishness, when we have very similar problems here in Kanada. However, unlike some others I think we should try to combat ALL of these problems rather than combat none of them. --Jamie. ...!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews "Are you by any chance Brewster?" "Oui, je suis Monsieur Bruste`re." -- Nabokov, _Lolita_
cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (Chris Shaw) (03/05/87)
In article brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (Dave Brewer, SysDesEng, UWaterloo) writes: > >>From: cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (Chris Shaw) >>Nonsense. Michigan State (Lansing) outranks (my alma mater) Waterloo on the >>all-important prestige scale? Gimme one exact Very Large Scale Break! > > Not knowing Lansing I can't comment, but it will always be possible ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ neither does anybody else. > to choose specific examples where my general comment > regarding prestige will be wrong. Come on Mr Brewer, you can do better than this. My point was this: There are a huge number of US schools whose research prestige is nil. You happen to be attending one of the top 5 Math, top 20 CompSci/Engineering schools on the continent. Period. Toronto is similar (i.e. different specific fields). > If instead of taking the current state of Toronto say, and cloning > 10 more, we took the current state, and produced 5 improved > "super"-clones then I agree with your conclusion. The point you're so desperately trying to make is that if you doubled Toronto's budget then it then Americans would be travelling North for their education. I don't think that the margin is 2, I think that the margin is 1.3 Actually, most of this cash in the US comes from that huge fount of free bucks, the Military. For example, a recent report from MIT indicated that more than 25% of their research funds were from the DOD. Another interesting statistic reported recently in IEEE Software indicated that the "top 5" CS schools in the US got the lion's share of DOD money. Say about 50%. The remaining schools of the top 30 got 45%, and the rest got bits & pieces. The fault I find with your estimation of research quality in US vs Canada is that you're comparing their top 5 with our top 5. When 50% of the US military's research budget is spent in their top 5, one expects a skew. MY point was that if you take a look at US schools 6-30, and applied the factor of 10, Canadian schools come out ahead, simply because within the 6-30 range, there is not such a gross funding skew. > Try not to become a man >UUCP : {decvax|ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!brewster of success but rather try >Else : Dave Brewer, (519) 886-6657 to become a man of value. > Albert Einstein -- Chris Shaw cdshaw@alberta University of Alberta CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !
brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (03/05/87)
>From: cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (Chris Shaw) >> If instead of taking the current state of Toronto say, and cloning >> 10 more, we took the current state, and produced 5 improved >> "super"-clones then I agree with your conclusion. >The point you're so desperately trying to make is that if you doubled Torontos >budget then it then Americans would be travelling North for their education. Not exactly, I was trying to say that if you increased Torontos budget (by some factor) then it might be reasonable to call it a world class research institution, which might have the side affect of Americans coming north; but would more likely have the side affect of more foreigners of every type coming to study in Canada, which is good or bad depending on your personal viewpoint. I don't believe that anyone considers Toronto (or Waterloo, or McGill, or etc.), in their current state, to be world class research institutions. (Pockets of excellence do not a world class institution make, and no one will dispute that there are some pockets of excellence in Canadian universities). I grant that there are universities around the world (and in the US), that are worse off, but there are also universities doing much, much better. Berkeley recently announce an alumni fund raising drive which will attempt to raise 1 BILLION dollars by 1991. Compare this to Waterloo's recent Watfund which raised approx 30 million over the same length of time and which includes to some extent corporate donations such as computer stock that companies couldn't move and so dumped for tax write-offs. Who will be able to afford to do leading edge research in the 90's ?? >Actually, most of this cash in the US comes from that huge fount of free bucks, >the Military. For example, a report from MIT indicated that more than 25% >of their research funds were from the DOD. Another interesting statistic >reported recently in IEEE Software indicated that the "top 5" CS >schools in the US got the lion's share of DOD money. Say about 50%. The >remaining schools of the top 30 got 45%, and the rest got bits & pieces. >The fault I find with your estimation of research quality in US vs Canada is >that you're comparing their top 5 with our top 5. When 50% of the US military's >research budget is spent in their top 5, one expects a skew. MY point was >that if you take a look at US schools 6-30, and applied the factor of 10, >Canadian schools come out ahead, simply because within the 6-30 range, there >is not such a gross funding skew. I don't debate your figures but I do debate your conclusion. Sure a lot of research money comes from military in the US, and a lot of people feel this is anywhere from undesirable to unacceptable to morally repugnant. But that doesn't change the fact that the schools in question are doing excellent research. Despite any personal qualms you have about how research is funded, you can't simply ignore the research results. It sounds like you are saying "If we ignore the top universities in the States then Canada comes out even or ahead in quality." This seems to be analogous to saying that since the NFL receives large network revenues, the average CFL team is actually better than the average NFL team after the top NFL teams are dismissed from the comparison due to the revenue skew. And while the BC Lions "might" beat the Bills, this matchup isn't really a fair comparison of the two leagues. It seems to be a little bogus (as opposed to bogus as hell) to simply apply your factor of 10 for comparison purposes. Institutions simply dont scale by multiples. Double the budget of Toronto and you won't have twice as many undergrads, twice as many grads and profs, twice as many publications, twice as many results, twice as many breakthroughs. This is especially true of public institutions. If the Canadian swivel service doubled in size do you think service would double ? if it were cut in half would service drop by a factor of two ?? I also feel that your refusal to admit that the US has better research institutions may in part be related to some misplaced nationalism. You know, "The US has better research institutions than us ???, no way, we're Canadians and we're at least as good as you are, why, we may even be better than your are, yeah, yeah, thats the ticket, we're twice as good, no, three times as good as you are, why, we're the best in the world, yeah, yeah, thats the ticket." If our institutions are not world class it seems to me that the people attending these institutions should be telling this to the public so as to increase support, as opposed to vaccuously claiming we are at least as good as the US and probably even better. Try not to become a man UUCP : {decvax|ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!brewster of success but rather try Else : Dave Brewer, (519) 886-6657 to become a man of value. Albert Einstein
manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (03/06/87)
Dave Brewer suggests that US universities do *better* research than Canadian
(or British or French or Australian or ..., by induction on my part), and
relates that to the amount of money they have at their disposal.
I too have no objections to accepting military money (I came to that
conclusion when I realised, during the Vietnam war, that every cent spent
from the military budget on "useless" unclassified research was a cent which
couldn't be spent to drop napalm on a little Vietnamese child); however, the
result of the enormous military spending is to skew the emphases in
different research areas. I'll use computer science as the only field on
which I'm competent to remark, but I'm sure the same is true in other fields.
In the US, the major source of military money for Computer Science is DARPA.
Other agencies include the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR),
and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), as well as specific contracts let by
the various forces (which tend to be more developmental rather than pure
research). "Pure" research is funded by the National Science Foundation,
primarily.
Up to the middle 1970's, DARPA (or ARPA, as it was then known) operated to
target areas of pure science which might be particularly useful to the
military. The development of the ARPAnet, as well as the various message
protocols and much early mail software, came under this rubric. So too did
time-sharing operating systems, computer speech recognition, robotics.
Similarly, ONR had a massive "AI" grant to Carnegie-Mellon University which
included the funding of C.mmp, the Hydra operating system, compiler
research, and other things (I spent a summer at CMU once working on an Algol
68 compiler which was funded as AI by ONR). Of course, there was much
classified research, but much of the military money was intentionally
targeted at longer range research. (As I recollect, some of the original
LOGO work at MIT was funded by ONR!)
In about 1975-1980, DARPA gradually shifted its emphasis toward work which
was more directly military, culminating in what eventually became the
software part of SDI. In part, this was because the military was under
pressure to show it wasn't "wasting" money (this from a government which
deals with General Dynamics and FMC!). As a result, the military is now in a
much stronger position to dictate what research is done. Thus CMU now does a
lot of Ada-related work.
Obviously s/he who pays the piper calls the tune. But what has happened in
the US is that research funds which might have gone to NSF now routinely go
through DARPA or a similar agency. As a result, the military is in a
position to fund "fad" research, which may or may not have any longterm
value. Rather than a multiplicity of funding agencies, the US has now
concentrated all of its eggs in a few baskets; long-range "pure" research
(e.g., theory), and research whose primary goal is non-military get short
shrift. Somebody mentioned a chart in IEEE software showing the sources of
US research funding. DARPA had a bar which extended across the page, while
NSF's barely departed from the left margin.
Even though Canada's research (and education) policies are atrocious, at
least our institutions aren't hopping on quite as many bandwagons because
that's where the money is (don't deluge me with mail: I know of lots of
Canadian exceptions to that statement). We aren't doing enough; but at least
(except for the SRTC) we aren't wasting money.
-----
Vincent Manis {seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis
Dept. of Computer Science manis@cs.ubc.cdn
Univ. of British Columbia manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 manis@ubc.csnet
(604) 228-6770 or 228-3061
"BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism'."rob@arcsun.UUCP (03/06/87)
In article <891@ubc-cs.UUCP>, manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis) writes: > I too have no objections to accepting military money (I came to that > conclusion when I realised, during the Vietnam war, that every cent spent > from the military budget on "useless" unclassified research was a cent which > couldn't be spent to drop napalm on a little Vietnamese child)... Regardless of how one feels about money from the military, the above rationalization is invalid. While the U.S. military (not its Canadian equivalent, which has no money) is prone to spending untold billions on research, it must believe that it is getting some return on its investment. So if your "useless" research enables the army to save $X on potato peelers, that money is freed up for more napalm. Rob Aitken {...ubc-vision,...alberta}!calgary!arcsun!rob Disclaimer: I liked the rest of the article.
brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (03/06/87)
>From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis) >Dave Brewer suggests that US universities do *better* research than Canadian >(or British or French or Australian or ..., by induction on my part), and >relates that to the amount of money they have at their disposal. More precisely, I said that the US has several world class research institutions and I doubt that the same can be said of Canada. Except for minor anecdotal comments I never mentioned other countries university systems, and any conclusions you drew in this regard were almost certainly based on inference as opposed to induction. >I too have no objections to accepting military money (I came to that >conclusion when I realised[sic], during the Vietnam war, that every cent spent >from the military budget on "useless" unclassified research was a cent which >couldn't be spent to drop napalm on a little Vietnamese child); Just to play devils advocate, who invented napalm and under what circumstances ??? Try not to become a man UUCP : {decvax|ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!brewster of success but rather try Else : Dave Brewer, (519) 886-6657 to become a man of value. Albert Einstein