Is MIT losing it?

sakky · March 25, 2007, 1:32pm

Again, this is a topic of great dispute. You still continue to discount the contributions of MIT to the Internet, particularly Berners-Lee and the founding of the W3C at MIT. What’s the most exciting trend in software in the last decade or so? Probably the open source movement, of which MIT employee and former student Richard Stallman and his GNU Project and Free Software Foundation have taken prominent leadership positions. For those who want to talk about Linux, remember that Linux is often times called “GNU/Linux” in recognition of the considerable contributions of the GNU project. Heck, Linux itself was inspired by Minix, which was developed by MIT graduate Andrew Tanenbaum.

Really? For ChemE? That’s quite interesting considering that MIT is ranked higher than Caltech in ChemE in both the NRC and USNews. Similarly, MIT is ranked above EE in both the NRC and USNews. Please get your facts right.

Uh, I think you just stated it implicitly. It’s the BROAD RANGE of excellence in the technical disciplines that make it a (I didn’t say “the”) premier technical school. You don’t have to win all of your battles. You just have to win the plurality. For example, Tiger Woods doesn’t win every single golf tournament he enters. Roger Federer doesn’t win every single tennis tournament.

orbis_somnio · March 25, 2007, 1:37pm

I would like some fries.

datalook · March 25, 2007, 1:58pm


Again, this is a topic of great dispute. You still continue to discount the contributions of MIT to the Internet, particularly Berners-Lee and the founding of the W3C at MIT. What's the most exciting trend in software in the last decade or so? Probably the open source movement, of which MIT employee and former student Richard Stallman and his GNU Project and Free Software Foundation have taken prominent leadership positions. For those who want to talk about Linux, remember that Linux is often times called "GNU/Linux" in recognition of the considerable contributions of the GNU project. Heck, Linux itself was inspired by Minix, which was developed by MIT graduate Andrew Tanenbaum

Sakky, Stanford was ranked higher than MIT in NRC ph.d program ranking in CS, EE, and ME. And Stanford has 18 ties to Turing awards. If you count the loose ties such as visiting professors, Stanford have at least 20 ties to Turing awards. How about MIT? You don’t want to use google (a Stanford invention by the way) to find out? I know you are a smart guy. You know quite a lot about EE/CS. Do you really believe MIT is as good as Stanford in CS? My suspect is that you attended MIT. And that leads to your bias in favoring MIT.

warblersrule · March 25, 2007, 1:59pm

Actually, sakky’s a Berkeley grad. Why not wait to bring this thread up in December, when the new NRC rankings come out?

BTW, MIT even does engineering research in classics.
<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html</a>

LauraN · March 25, 2007, 2:17pm

orbis_somnio: Super size them for an extra 25 cents?

(Man I would be so good at this.)

datalook · March 25, 2007, 2:27pm


Apparently, since telling us that we no longer make any positive contributions to society has not broken our spirits and made us bow down to your "superior" arguments, you have to resort to calling us immature, whiny screamers incapable of making logical arguments who would never get into Stanford.

Come on. You are attending MIT. Your logic training should be better than that.

Did anybody say MIT does no longer make positive contributions to the society? NO. I only said Stanford has contributed more than MIT in technology invetions since 1970. Right? And I know MIT has been ranked #1 in engineering by USNEWS. And MIT has most NAE members (100+, I believe I am the first one who posted this in this forum). I didn’t attend Stanford. I have no obligation to ■■■■■ for Stanford. I based my observation on hard data. If you think MIT is as good as Stanford, or even better. Show me please.

sakky · March 25, 2007, 2:30pm

And according to the NRC, MIT was ranked higher in biomedical, aerospace, chemical, civil, and materials science. So it seems to me that, overall, MIT is ranked higher than Stanford in engineering (5>3). So who has the stronger claim of being the overall #1 engineering school, according to the NRC? I see.

And besides, I’m not convinced that the old NRC ranking is meaningful, particularly because a new NRC ranking is supposed to come out shortly. But, hey if you insist on using that old NRC ranking, all I know is that 5>3.

As Warblerrules stated above, I came from Berkeley. And I have been accused MANY times of being a Berkeley basher, as you can see if you search through my old threads (especially in my responses to Berkeley-boosters like CalX, eudean, and, in the old days, rayrayray_222). Even in this thread, you don’t see me touting Berkeley, do you?

sakky · March 25, 2007, 2:33pm

How convenient for you to choose the year “1970”. Why not push it back just one year to 1969, and now we can talk about the Arpanet (which is now the Internet)? Again, MIT grads Larry Roberts and Len Kleinrock designed the Arpanet.

Oh, but because you arbitrarily chose 1970, I guess we can’t count the Arpanet, because it missed the cutoff by one year, right?

In other words, we’re supposed to count the development of TCP/IP on the Arpanet/Internet because that happened in the early 1970’s, but we’re not allowed to count the development of the Arpanet itself because that actually happened 1 year before 1970, right? How convenient.

datalook · March 25, 2007, 2:46pm


And according to the NRC, MIT was ranked higher in biomedical, aerospace, chemical, civil, and materials science. So it seems to me that, overall, MIT is ranked higher than Stanford in engineering (5>3). So who has the stronger claim of being the overall #1 engineering school, according to the NRC? I see.

If you think those fields are equally important, I would say MIT is #1. I don’t want to challenge that. But EE, CS, and ME are big fields (more important than the others in my view), and usually more people attend. Losing all these big fields makes MIT looking bad. In addition, don’t forget Stanford’s strength in enviromental engineering (#1 in US NEWS), industrial engineering, and petrolium engineering (#1 in USNEWS). Another thing you might have noticed is that in USNEWS, Stanford is now beating up MIT and Caltech in Arespace engineering, probably partially due to the contribution from Brad Parkinson’s GPS center. But we’ll see what will happen in the next NRC ranking.

pebbles · March 25, 2007, 2:52pm

We’ll all be holding our breaths with you on that one, databook.

orbis_somnio · March 25, 2007, 3:10pm

How convenient of you to leave out MIT’s USNEWS rankings for the “big fields.”

MIT/Stanford
EE: #1/#2
CS: #1/#1
ME: #1/#2

datalook · March 25, 2007, 3:19pm


How convenient for you to choose the year "1970". Why not push it back just one year to 1969, and now we can talk about the Arpanet (which is now the Internet)? Again, MIT grads Larry Roberts and Len Kleinrock designed the Arpanet. </p>

<p>Oh, but because you arbitrarily chose 1970, I guess we can't count the Arpanet, because it missed the cutoff by one year, right?</p>

<p>In other words, we're supposed to count the development of TCP/IP on the Arpanet/Internet because that happened in the early 1970's, but we're not allowed to count the development of the Arpanet itself because that actually happened 1 year before 1970, right? How convenient.

Should I change that to “since 1969” so that you can include Aparnet? Fine, let’s do that.

In terms of the birth of internet. I think Vint Cerf’s contribution alone is already bigger than Kleinrock and Roberts’ combined. I am not denying Kleinrock and Roberts’ pioneer role in Aparnet. But what governs today’s internet is packet switching and Cerf and Kahn’s TCP/IP. I am not sure if we can still find anything from Roberts. Kleinrock did not invent the packet switching. There are another 2 people behind this idea: Paul Barren and Donald Davies. Davies fiercely disagree Kleinrock’s impact in Packet switching. Without Kleinrock, packet switching would still come out.

Cerf is the most often referred “the father of internet”. Cerf and Kahn have been recognized by Turing prize, the national medal of technology, and the medal of freedom. Kleinrock and Roberts’ contribution is no way at Cerf’s level.

You keep mentioning Tim Berners-Lee. This is a great guy, no doubt. But He did his work in WWW long before he went to MIT. W3C is not at the level of WWW. You should know that already.

Finally, the birth of internet was made possible by Stanford, UCLA, and MIT.

What have Stanford and MIT done after that? Again, here are Stanford’s contributions: Yahoo, GOOGLE (along with Altavista), 56k modem, DSL broadband internet connection, Multiprotocol router, and SUN. these are only what I know so far. I don’t see how MIT can match that. In fact, I believe no other place is even close to Stanford in its contribution to internet.

milki · March 25, 2007, 3:30pm

This might help you a bit

<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/pulse/mit_inventions_breakthroughs/index.shtml[/url]”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/pulse/mit_inventions_breakthroughs/index.shtml</a>

datalook · March 25, 2007, 3:30pm


How convenient of you to leave out MIT's USNEWS rankings for the "big fields."</p>

<p>MIT/Stanford
EE: #1/#2
CS: #1/#1
ME: #1/#2

I’m aware of that. But NRC ranking is generally more reliable.

Dirt_McGirt · March 25, 2007, 3:30pm

datalook,

The problem with your argument about all of these rankings is that you are the only one that is making a definitive statement that one school is better than the other. Sakky and others are saying that all of the schools you mentioned (MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley) are great engineering schools and can probably in some way or another claim to be the best. All of those schools make big contributions to engineering.

I said it before and I’ll say it again:
MIT never has been and never will be the ONLY great engineering school. It has been and is still one of the best.

molliebatmit · March 25, 2007, 3:40pm

The thing I find puzzling is that, aside from one-note posters wanking on the internet, nobody cares whether or not a given school is ranked #1 or #2 or #3 – prospective graduate students (and hopefully, prospective undergraduate students) know better than to pick a school based on its rank one place above another school.

I have several friends picking between Stanford and MIT for aerospace engineering. They’re not basing their decisions based on which program is “better” – they’re deciding based on funding offers.

To give another example that doesn’t involve MIT, I picked Harvard’s biology program (ranked #2 by US News) over Stanford’s (ranked #1). Even though Stanford was ranked above Harvard, I was aware that the one place of ranking meant absolutely nothing for me – it didn’t mean I was going to get a better education, or do better research, at Stanford. At that level of quality, a one place difference is totally irrelevant.

So the difference of one or two places in the rankings doesn’t affect the quality of graduate students a program gets. It doesn’t affect the quality of faculty members a program gets. So what does it matter for anyone?

orbis_somnio · March 25, 2007, 3:52pm

You used USNEWS for certain fields. I believe I am also qualified to use them.

Why would you bring that up if the NRC is more reliable and ranks MIT higher than Stanford in aerospace? You argue one-dimensionally and only according to whatever dimension that conveys Stanford in a better light. One example would be in post #109 where you referred to USNEWS rankings for certain fields and excluded MIT’s rankings.

datalook · March 25, 2007, 3:55pm

You are right. Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Caltech are all great engineering schools. All of them could make some sort of arguments to claim to be #1. The thing I don’t like is some people here or there keep saying “MIT=engineering and engineering=MIT”, which I think is laughable.

Based on the facts I know, Stanford > MIT in technology inventions since 1970 or so. I am just doing this for fun. Don’t take that as an insult to MIT. If you can prove me wrong, I’m willing to concede. For example, I have cited 18 Turing awards from Stanford. Hence I claim Stanford is better than MIT in CS. If you can show me MIT has as many Turing awards ties or can come up with a close number. I’m willing to withdraw my statement.

LauraN · March 25, 2007, 4:52pm

Actually, I don’t think anyone posting in this thread actually believes that, and most of us have categorically stated that we do not believe that to be true. And if I haven’t explicitly stated it just yet, let me do so now: I do not believe that MIT is the be all and end all of engineering schools. So what exactly are we arguing here?

Perplexitudinous · March 25, 2007, 5:36pm

To be fair, I do recall one poster in one thread (might have been the one comparing MIT to Harvard a while back) having written “MIT=engineering and engineering=MIT.”

Is MIT losing it?

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