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The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

bloomberg.com

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Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#51

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

virmundi wrote: post #19
zakk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They beat the US in sending the first man to space. Saying that “they never achieved much” is a gigantic understatement!!

Fair point. Poor wording on my part. Given the way the ranking under discussion values tertiary education and given how much the Soviets had them but didn't succeed economically, is having a high number of them really beneficial? It takes resources and time to get a PhD or a masters. Are these the best thing on which to spend them? Do they really matter? Can you be more practically innovative with simple undergrad de…

Innovation and economic success are not the same thing.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#52

Post by FilterSweep »

cromwellian wrote: post #31

Is # of patent applications really a criteria in innovation? Seems to value quantity over quality.

Well, that also creates a further negative effect toward the "Patent Troll" system prevalent in the US.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#53

Post by jandrese »

electrograv wrote: post #16
tlb wrote: post #8

What drags the US down most in these rankings is "tertiary efficiency": roughly the fraction of people in grad school or with graduate degrees. Ranking countries is a dodgy business, even more than ranking colleges. A different set of weights or ways of measuring things could give you totally different answers. If you're looking for a way to claim the rankings are biased, you might argue that this up-ranks countries…

When casual readers see results titled "Bloomberg Innovation Index" (myself included, a while ago), there's a tendency due to brand reputation (Bloomberg!) to believe that this is some scientifically and statistically rigorous analysis of a well-defined "innovation" that can be trusted. This is dangerous, and IMO disappointing (I know, I was naive and optimistic) regarding the statistical credibility of many "reputab…

In other words it is about as rigorous as any other Internet listicle[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listicle

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#55

Post by fishcolorbrick »

creaghpatr wrote: post #27
dba7dba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't other nations also receive much aid from US but score low in this ranking?

Yeah but most other nations receive hundreds of millions of dollars and it's mostly africa and middle eastern countries. US is planning to spend 1.3 trillion in Israel in FY18, although I imagine most of that is military. No denying Israel is a leader in innovation because they absolutely are, but the headline seems to imply that they unseated the US, which is kind of misleading. https://www.foreignassistance.gov/exp…

>US is planning to spend 1.3 trillion in Israel in FY18

That isn't what your source says... where'd you get that number?

[0]: https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore/country/Israel

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#56

Post by didibus »

electrograv wrote: post #16
tlb wrote: post #8

What drags the US down most in these rankings is "tertiary efficiency": roughly the fraction of people in grad school or with graduate degrees. Ranking countries is a dodgy business, even more than ranking colleges. A different set of weights or ways of measuring things could give you totally different answers. If you're looking for a way to claim the rankings are biased, you might argue that this up-ranks countries…

When casual readers see results titled "Bloomberg Innovation Index" (myself included, a while ago), there's a tendency due to brand reputation (Bloomberg!) to believe that this is some scientifically and statistically rigorous analysis of a well-defined "innovation" that can be trusted. This is dangerous, and IMO disappointing (I know, I was naive and optimistic) regarding the statistical credibility of many "reputab…

It sounds a little like denial. I mean, Bloomberg does a great job, its pretty simple: "The 2018 ranking process began with more than 200 economies. Each was scored on a 0-100 scale based on seven equally weighted categories. Nations that didn’t report data for at least six categories were eliminated".

So its an equally weighted average of 7 categories. The data was reported by the nations themselves.

Now the key takeaway is that the US dropped out of the top 10. Comparatively, you can tell something is changing in the US causing a drop.

Metrics are just indicator, and can sometimes misrepresent the reality, but more often, there's truth in the metrics also. Its hard to say what the impact of this innovation score is, is it economic, or is it social, but clearly the score change is due to real realities changing.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#57

Post by Bucephalus355 »

vidoc wrote: post #46
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a serious article from the Washington Post?

Do you find the title serious? And how about the illustration? Did you ask yourself if this could possibly be a russian bashing wapo article by any chance?

It’s from 2014, before the Jeff Bezos acquisition and the current Russian collision investigation.

Regarding the Russian investigation, I agree with Glenn Greenewald that there is nothing there, and that the Democrats are in danger of becoming the HUAC of the 2020’s.

Also, in defense of Trump, I think he understands that the real danger is China, who fakes both the degrees AND the research. See this article:

- Fraud Scandals Sap China’s Dream of Becoming a Science Superpower https://nyti.ms/2kNc3Ez

I hope that adds more nuance to my post.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#58

Post by virmundi »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #45
martinshen wrote: post #6

Honestly a lot of these "global" rating systems are ridiculous. The US easily produces the most innovation globally. This is similar to ranking systems that consider McGill the Harvard of Canada or consider Babson College the #1 for Entrepreneurship.

>The US easily produces the most innovation globally As would be expected given the size of the US population. The only two more populous countries are both developing nations. But a ranking that didn't normalise over the size of the population would make even less sense than this one.

The EU is a confederation. They need to be considered as a block now. Don't look at Germany. Look at the EU.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#59

Post by ryandrake »

The discussion so far reminds me a little of whenever a "Top N school rankings" report comes out. People who go (or went) to any of the top-ranked schools will use it to argue that their schools are better, and people who go to the lower-ranked schools will downplay the results, nit-pick the methodology, point out that the top N are all within a small margin of error, etc. A little tribalism?

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#60

Post by virmundi »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #51
virmundi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. Poor wording on my part. Given the way the ranking under discussion values tertiary education and given how much the Soviets had them but didn't succeed economically, is having a high number of them really beneficial? It takes resources and time to get a PhD or a masters. Are these the best thing on which to spend them? Do they really matter? Can you be more practically innovative with simple undergrad de…

Innovation and economic success are not the same thing.

While not necessarily so, they do seem to have are strong causal relationship. The more innovative an economy, the more economic freedom it has.
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