Education and Didactics

2001 Submissions

[2] viXra:2001.0595 [pdf] submitted on 2020-01-27 11:50:59

Is Science a Pyramid Scheme? the Correlation Between an Author's Position in the Academic Hierarchy and Her Scientific Output Per Year

Authors: Charleeze P. Ponzi
Comments: 7 Pages.

A grievance expressed by some PhD students and Postdocs is that science works like a pyramid scheme: Young scientists are encouraged to invest into building scientific careers although the chances at remaining in science are extremely slim. This issue is investigated quantitatively by connecting it with the way authorship on papers is distributed. I analyzed a large bibliographic dataset made available by Microsoft under the name Academic Graph to create a histogram with the number of articles an author produces per year. The histogram has the shape of a pyramid, and different layers in it correlate with positions in the academic hierarchy. The super-prolific authors at the top of the pyramid with more than 40 publications per year are usually heads of large institutes with many subgroups and large numbers of PhD students, while the bottom of the pyramid is populated by PhD students and Postdocs with less than 5 publications per year. The mechanism that allows 'manager scientists' to appropriate publications generated in their sphere of influence is related to other issues, such as the evaluation of scientific performance based on scientometric indicators and the lenient enforcement of authorship rules. A new index, the Ponzi factor, is proposed to quantify this phenomenon.
Category: Education and Didactics

[1] viXra:2001.0023 [pdf] submitted on 2020-01-02 09:59:43

Interpretation of Shannon Entropies with Various Bases by Means of Multinary Searching Games

Authors: Hsuan-Hao Chao, Chang Hsu, Long Hsu, Sien Chi
Comments: 8 Pages.

Ben-Naim used twenty question games to illustrate Shannon entropy with base 2 as a measure of the amount of information in terms of the minimum average number of binary questions. We found that Shannon entropy with base 2 equal to the minimum average number of binary questions is only valid under a special condition. The special condition is referred to as the equiprobability condition, which requires that the outcomes of every question have equal probability, thus restricting the probability distribution. This requirement is proven for a ternary game and a proposed multinary game as well. The proposed multinary game finds a coin hidden in one of several boxes by using a multiple pan balance. We have shown that the minimum average number of weighing measurements by using the multiple pan balance can be directly obtained by using Shannon entropy with base b under the equiprobability condition. Therefore, Shannon entropy with base b can be interpreted as the minimum average number of weighing measurements by using the multiple pan balance when the multiple outcomes have equal probability every time.
Category: Education and Didactics