No Knock Against CHS’s Influence But ...
DaveSchmidt said:
The “most influential alumni” listed for Columbia? All are from Columbia High School in Lake City, Fla. (Here’s looking at you, Pat Summerall.)
Sounds like the machine could have used some tutoring from Mr. T’s students.
Was the Alumni list updated? (ETA: Maybe it was human copy/paste into website error?) Here's the list of influential alumna I see listed now, many of which I recognize... and I don't see Pat.
Most influential alumni:
DaveSchmidt said:
The “most influential alumni” listed for Columbia? All are from Columbia High School in Lake City, Fla. (Here’s looking at you, Pat Summerall.)
Maybe they updated it. Zach Graff needs to be fixed though.
Thanks, sprout and jamie. I was going to try contacting Academic Influence today to ask which was mistaken — the ranking of our CHS or the list — and was just about to get around to it. Looks like it was the list. Last night it led with Summerall, followed by a bunch of other athletes; the ones I looked up were all football players. I’m relieved that CHS’s more eclectic group prevailed.
Too bad Paul Auster isn’t on there. A review he wrote influenced me to read one of my favorite novels, Life: A User’s Manual.
DaveSchmidt - There was a virtual discussion with Paul Auster on April 3 hosted by the South Orange Public Library.
jamie said:
Zach Graff needs to be fixed though.
Roy, too. Ms. Buckholtz’s students could probably tutor the machine as well.
Just peeked a bit more around the site, and their AI learning tool, or humans, need to learn something about QA processes. Misspellings, inconsistencies/missing information, etc.
Out of the organizations that do "Top X rankings", I rank AcademicInfluence.com around #1176.
- For starters, to claim their methodology is non-gameable is arrogant, and quite the invitation for others to figure out how to manipulate their rankings. [ETA: Or for their algorithm to just be built basically on BS]
- Also, I'm going to bet that with all the errors and missing info, their rankings algorithm includes incorrect/incomplete info, which may have more than negligible influence.
- Potential for bias: In AI learning, bias is a serious concern. Training mechanisms for an AI engine, especially ones that use 'real world information', often include societal biases. Just a thought for the mostly White/male AI team: https://academicinfluence.com/about/our-team
sprout said:
Was the Alumni list updated? (ETA: Maybe it was human copy/paste into website error?) Here's the list of influential alumna I see listed now, many of which I recognize... and I don't see Pat.
Most influential alumni:
Orrin Devinsky 
This man saved my life, and countless others' too,. A true hero of mine.
And I think someone has Zach Graff confused with Zach Braff!
ETA: Oh, I MISSED the SchNeider typo!
In Library School (as well as many other sources) I was always taught a large number of typos was the first sign to move on to a more reliable source...... Just sayin'.
... don’t ask these rankers for directions how to get there.
From the school district, via Village Green:
“Columbia High School was ranked #21 among 50 of the most influential public high schools in the United States by Academic Influence. CHS was identified as a top 50 US public high school based on the accumulative influence of its alumni. ...
“AcademicInfluence.com is a team of academics and data scientists working to provide an objective, non-gameable influence-based ranking for the people, schools, and disciplinary programs that make up higher education. To that end, they have engineered an innovative and unbiased ranking technology that employs machine learning to measure the impact of work produced by the world’s top academic influencers. ... The full list of high schools can be found here: https://academicinfluence.com/rankings/schools/influential-public-high-schools-us.”
The “most influential alumni” listed for Columbia? All are from Columbia High School in Lake City, Fla. (Here’s looking at you, Pat Summerall.)
Sounds like the machine could have used some tutoring from Mr. T’s students.