The Incoherent Ponderer does a quick'n'dirty analysis of physics department rankings and how their graduates place.
Shit scary stuff.
Don't just look at the absolute numbers, look at the percentages...
More like this
With apologies to Radiohead's "There, there":
The intelligent can be wrong very coherently. The intelligent can be right very coherently. The stupid can be wrong very incoherently. The stupid can be right very incoherently. The intelligent can do some stupid things very quickly. The stupid can do many stupid things very slowly.
Over at The Edge Scott Atran and Sam Harris continue to spar over the question of religion. This is a continuation of the discussions that occurred at Beyond Belief 2006.
Phillip Ball has a long aggrieved essay about the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which is, as
Ugh.
Very scary.
Also scary how well it correlates with the US News rankings. A case can be made here for closed-loop nepotism....
I'd be interested to see how the numbers stack up for "all credible Physics programs," University and SLA alike.
I think Vandy didn't make it into the top fifty 15 years ago when the National Academy last did their rankings. However, places like here have "more than their share" of people who got degrees from Berkeley, Caltech, etc. I have this impression that the story at all colleges and universities would be similar. Not *quite* as top-heavy as the story for the top 50 universities, but still top heavy.
Ultimately, we produce too many graduate students. There's an oversupply of people to fill faculty positions, so there are plenty of "top 10 school" alums to go around.
-Rob