OT: Time Magazine: How influential is your school?

Submitted by WindyCityBlue on

If analyzing brackets hasn't wasted enough of your time, Time Magazine has developed an interactive tool to measure how influential your school is compared to another school.  Simply put 2 schools into the program and hit "Go".  Its no surprise that we are one of the most influential schools, beating out all our B10 cohorts and a handful of Ivies.  Not sure about the methodology, but if you are looking for a unique way to pick your brackets, look no further.  

http://time.com/27821/us-college-rankings/?hpt=hp_t3

Bando Calrissian

March 18th, 2014 at 12:11 PM ^

This is hilarious. Plug in Michigan and the University of Chicago, and take a look at how they gauge "influential."

Non-alums Juwan Howard (never finished his degree at Michigan), Madonna (left early), and Michael Phelps (on campus for one academic year), and Trey Burke versus Nate Silver, James Watson (co-discovered DNA), Philip Glass, Paul Wolfowitz...

Yo_Blue

March 18th, 2014 at 12:14 PM ^

Our top notable alum is Madonna??? WTF?!?  Second is Juwan Howard.

Haven't they heard of a guy named Gerald Ford?

On the funny side, Spike Albrech gets a -2.6 rating?

Space Coyote

March 18th, 2014 at 12:28 PM ^

Tim Allen is on both lists (went to CMU then trasferred to WMU, where he graduated), but he gets a 1.2 score for CMU and a 0.2 score for WMU. But then I compared CMU with EMU and Tim Allen was -1.6. Lastly, I compared WMU with EMU, where Tim Allen was now NaN.

It appears the score at the time remains the same, but the rest changes. I don't understand this tool. Also, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is a negative infinity, which just seems mean.

Gobgoblue

March 18th, 2014 at 12:32 PM ^

is 3.43 times more influential than MSU and 2.67 times more influential than OSU.   By comparison, Michigan is closer to Harvard (Harvard is 1.89 x Michigan) than MSU/OSU is to us. 

EDIT:  The metric and tool makes no sense, but it is fun to play around with it. 

KevGoBlue

March 18th, 2014 at 12:37 PM ^

I think this was for living people. I looked for Gerald Ford, but found Harold Ford as a politician. I thought it was a mistake. Turns out Harold Ford is a politician. Who knew? Or cared? He's just a 3 star out of TN anyway.

 

/let's see what his spring roster weight was

Yeoman

March 18th, 2014 at 12:58 PM ^

 

For each person in the “Living People” category, TIME used the MediaWiki API to gather four data points: The number of words in the text, the number of internal links to other Wikipedia pages, the number of external links, and the number of categories to which the page belonged.

 

And that's how the author of the 4th edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide became one of the most influential alums of my school.

SAMgO

March 18th, 2014 at 1:20 PM ^

Harvard and Columbia were the only two I could find that beat out Michigan and I put us against a lot of top schools. Anybody else beat us out in this thing?

Mr Mxyzptlk

March 18th, 2014 at 1:50 PM ^

It says the University of Michigan is 2.67 times more influential than Ohio State University, 3.43 times more influential than Michigan State University and is 2.94 times more influential than the Univerisity of Notre Dame.  Clearly this must be true.

74polSKA

March 18th, 2014 at 2:29 PM ^

The fact Michigan is 13.09 times more influential than my Alma Mater Ohio (NTO) does not shock me at all. I was surprised that we not only claim Ed O'Neill, but also Arsenio Hall and Nancy Cartwright as alumni. You are welcome Fox progamming circa 1990!!

Hugh White

March 18th, 2014 at 5:05 PM ^

1.  It is not a good tool for helping fill out one's bracket.  Wofford is not even populated into the tool.  Perhaps that is a result in and of itself.

2.  For the results that do come up, it is fun to imagine the listing of notable alumni as being the rosters of starting players in a game of pick-up hoop.  In the Third Round, Saturday, for example, we would watch Madonna, Juwan Howard, Michael Phelps, and Trey Burke take on UT's Roger Clemens, Colt McCoy, Vince Young, and Karl Rove.  That seems like an easy one.  But things get more interesting next week, when our team tips off against Duke's Jabari Parker, Tommy Amaker, Rand Paul, Jon Scheyer, and Jack F. Matlock Jr. Of course, it's all for charity.

pushingrage

March 19th, 2014 at 5:14 AM ^

I believe that every chool plays an important part in influencing a student's life. This may be through learning, sports and other activities. For me, I may say that it helps me and influence me a lot. The trainings they gave clearly reflect of how i played my part in anything I tried to accomplish every now and then.