Friday, August 19, 2011
Patent citations
Interesting bit of the day: if you look at granted patents and calculate the age of the patents that the given patent cites and calculate averages, it appears that the selection of companies affects the value quite a bit. In my case the aggregate patents of about 120 companies involved in either high-tech/electronics and/or automobiles shows that on average newer patents are cited than in the case of all the patents. The timeframe has been the patents from 1976 to 2010. Diagram below, blue bars are the first group and green is the group with all patents.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
More on education: incentives and linearity
I think I've written about education on multiple occasions, but let's revisit the topic again. So to briefly recap, the western education system is out of control. On one hand the fees universities are charging are growing rapidly, excluding the possibility of higher education for the masses. At the same time, the level of education when adjusted for the cost is questionable as MIT and Stanford are giving away lectures and materials online for free. This means that ultimately the student is merely paying for the stamp of approval that the prestigious university with its reputation is able to provide. Less reputable universities thus cannot charge as high prices as the elite universities. And in Finland all of this is moot as the government subsidises studies and the main problem here is how to get students to graduate as quickly as possible so they can start making money to pay taxes (i.e. become productive cogs in the system) and minimize the economic impact of their studies via costs.
Ultimately there is a crisis afoot here, namely because more people strive for higher education based on the assumption that higher education will give you higher salaries. Along with cost of education, unemployment is also on the rise meaning that for the benefits from potentially increased salary take longer to materialize. And at the same time we are straying very far away from the questions regarding what the purpose of education is, to the society, to the academia and to the students.
Reflecting on those points, I keep getting this feeling that the linearity of my studies is counterproductive. I'm selected at the age of 18 to start studying towards a MSc (Tech) without really any concept of what this stuff is about, what sort of skills I might need and the only way I can keep track of where we are going in e.g. mathematics is trying to tie the concepts down to concepts I already know. And then eventually further down the road I might notice that some of the things are in fact useful (e.g. it is nice to know the basics of matrices, eigenvalues and eigenvectors if you want to figure out which trends are central in generating and sustaining violent conflicts in the Middle East) and then you need to revisit the issues. But alas due to the linear fashion of studies, you already went through the "basic" courses years ago and revisiting the courses and asking more intelligent questions (as you now have a better understanding of applications, etc.) is looked down upon as you are merely wasting more resources.
So, to tease out what the problem is, we can cite Warren Buffet's partner Charlie Munger, who told us that to understand why things are the way they are and to predict where they are going, you need merely look at the incentives. And none of the larger institutions at the current stage really have incentives to actually teach the students anything real. It's only if the students pursue an academic career that they might with a certain degree of probability need the basic skills taught in Masters programs. And even then it's still most likely cheaper to teach the skills at the later stage again than to spend enormous amounts of effort in the earlier stages to make sure that the entire class understands the ideas and concepts in class.
Another point is the cyclicality: something should be done about that. The reason why Finnish engineers have traditionally been fairly good is mainly due to the fact that at a very early stage of their studies, the students often already go to the industry to work on real issues. Their work naturally gives them problems to think about, which they can then bring back to school and try to work out, creating a tighter linkage to their studies by giving more motivation that the things being studied are actually useful. It also benefits the industry because they get relatively cheap labor which also is very rapid in adapting and learning things due to the close link to the university and the framework behind the students which supports learning. So while bearing this in mind, it seems very counterproductive for the state to demand quicker graduation times from students, as that would wreck this dynamic. But on the other hand if education costs were shed upon the shoulders of students in the form of tuition fees of say 10 000 euros per year, this is also quite a high opportunity cost for having a support network you can potentially tap, especially when considering that a person who goes to say 20 courses a year actually generates more costs for the university than a student who merely takes, say, three courses a year. So this should also ideally be addressed when redesigning the education systems.
Sorry again for not having any real tangible solutions at this stage, but I thought it worth ranting about these subjects just for the record and for future reference when I go through these entries at later stages.
Ultimately there is a crisis afoot here, namely because more people strive for higher education based on the assumption that higher education will give you higher salaries. Along with cost of education, unemployment is also on the rise meaning that for the benefits from potentially increased salary take longer to materialize. And at the same time we are straying very far away from the questions regarding what the purpose of education is, to the society, to the academia and to the students.
Reflecting on those points, I keep getting this feeling that the linearity of my studies is counterproductive. I'm selected at the age of 18 to start studying towards a MSc (Tech) without really any concept of what this stuff is about, what sort of skills I might need and the only way I can keep track of where we are going in e.g. mathematics is trying to tie the concepts down to concepts I already know. And then eventually further down the road I might notice that some of the things are in fact useful (e.g. it is nice to know the basics of matrices, eigenvalues and eigenvectors if you want to figure out which trends are central in generating and sustaining violent conflicts in the Middle East) and then you need to revisit the issues. But alas due to the linear fashion of studies, you already went through the "basic" courses years ago and revisiting the courses and asking more intelligent questions (as you now have a better understanding of applications, etc.) is looked down upon as you are merely wasting more resources.
So, to tease out what the problem is, we can cite Warren Buffet's partner Charlie Munger, who told us that to understand why things are the way they are and to predict where they are going, you need merely look at the incentives. And none of the larger institutions at the current stage really have incentives to actually teach the students anything real. It's only if the students pursue an academic career that they might with a certain degree of probability need the basic skills taught in Masters programs. And even then it's still most likely cheaper to teach the skills at the later stage again than to spend enormous amounts of effort in the earlier stages to make sure that the entire class understands the ideas and concepts in class.
Another point is the cyclicality: something should be done about that. The reason why Finnish engineers have traditionally been fairly good is mainly due to the fact that at a very early stage of their studies, the students often already go to the industry to work on real issues. Their work naturally gives them problems to think about, which they can then bring back to school and try to work out, creating a tighter linkage to their studies by giving more motivation that the things being studied are actually useful. It also benefits the industry because they get relatively cheap labor which also is very rapid in adapting and learning things due to the close link to the university and the framework behind the students which supports learning. So while bearing this in mind, it seems very counterproductive for the state to demand quicker graduation times from students, as that would wreck this dynamic. But on the other hand if education costs were shed upon the shoulders of students in the form of tuition fees of say 10 000 euros per year, this is also quite a high opportunity cost for having a support network you can potentially tap, especially when considering that a person who goes to say 20 courses a year actually generates more costs for the university than a student who merely takes, say, three courses a year. So this should also ideally be addressed when redesigning the education systems.
Sorry again for not having any real tangible solutions at this stage, but I thought it worth ranting about these subjects just for the record and for future reference when I go through these entries at later stages.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The reason for the unrests in London?
It's the same as the reason for many problems: people don't think things through. Even people who think they have nothing to lose have many things to lose. They just haven't thought it through...
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