Gangan Prathap
NISCAIR (CSIR), Informatics and Informetrics, Department Member
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An inaugural Global Knowledge Index (GKI) has been released to the public recently. This is a joint exercise between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF),... more
An inaugural Global Knowledge Index (GKI) has been released to the public recently. This is a joint exercise between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF), Dubai. This first edition has profiled 7 sectors in 131 countries and is intended to help as a guide to track knowledge wealth for stronger nation-building and achieving sustainable development.
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The latest (2016) version of the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) report has been released on-line.
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Science is arguably the most revolutionary social activity known to us. It has transformed us and our environment in ways unimaginable three thousand years ago. If we are healthier, wealthier and wiser (but maybe not happier?) than our... more
Science is arguably the most revolutionary social activity known to us. It has transformed us and our environment in ways unimaginable three thousand years ago. If we are healthier, wealthier and wiser (but maybe not happier?) than our forefathers, it is largely due to modern science. Unfortunately, not many of us stop to reflect on how this unique social activity originated. In this essay in two parts, I hope to offer an account that is representative rather than comprehensive or definitive. It reflects and is limited by my own reading on this subject but I hope that it may persuade the reader to enquire further into the nature of the origins of science. Part I deals with the period leading to the great intellectual leap made by the Ionian philosopher Thales. Part II, which will appear in a future issue will complete the study of the Greek odyssey into philosophy immediately after Thales.
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30-31On Boxing Day 2012, Kumar Sangakkara joined a select club of Test batsmen who had reached the extraordinary milestone of 10,000 runs
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medical sciences. During the last 20 years, there has been a fall in research output both in quan tity and quality, as revealed by the survey. Using the Science Citation Index of Institute for Scientific Information, a su rvey reveals a... more
medical sciences. During the last 20 years, there has been a fall in research output both in quan tity and quality, as revealed by the survey. Using the Science Citation Index of Institute for Scientific Information, a su rvey reveals a dismal state of affairs in scientific research in India at the glo bal level. During 1980s, India occupied the 8th position among the top 20 nations of the world in scientific research. During 1990s, India came down in rank to the 12th position, after Italy, Holland, Spain and Australia, with only one-tenth of the scientific manpower available in them compared to that in India. It clearly shows our per capita productivity is much lower compared with that of the Europeans; what to speak of the Japanese and Americans who are far ahead? With decline in scie ntific research, India is now out of the top 20 nations. Compared with India, scientific productivity of China, South Korea and Japan, our Asian giants, has increased immensely. The commentary on slowing down of
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What the textbooks don't teach you about finite element analysis
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The performance index (p-index) is a composite indicator which can effectively combine size and quality of scientific papers. It is able to complement the h-index and give it better resolving power and at the same time is free of the many... more
The performance index (p-index) is a composite indicator which can effectively combine size and quality of scientific papers. It is able to complement the h-index and give it better resolving power and at the same time is free of the many limitations that the h-index has. The curious structure of the p-index allows it to be interpreted using an energy argument and here, borrowing from electrical analogy, the power/energy basis for bibliometric research assessment is proposed. The proxy for the energy of ideas turns out to be E = Pi 2 where P is measured in the unit in which ideas are conveyed (here, the number of papers) and i is a measure of the rate at which ideas are transmitted as citations (here, a proxy for quality). The energy assessment technique is demonstrated by applying it to the research assessment of the laboratories belonging to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
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Abstract Networks constructed from citation and publication data can be mined to find top-ranking authors or papers using graph-theoretic algorithms. This article proposes an indicator called the “follow-score” that identifies which... more
Abstract Networks constructed from citation and publication data can be mined to find top-ranking authors or papers using graph-theoretic algorithms. This article proposes an indicator called the “follow-score” that identifies which authors are the most resourceful to “follow” in terms of referencing patterns within a given body of literature. For testing purposes, we use Web of Science indexed publications under the subject category of “Information Science & Library Science” between the years 2008 and 2018 inclusive. Using the top-ranking follow-worthy authors, we search the study dataset for other similar researchers using cosine similarity.
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Epidemiological studies suggest that age distribution of a population has a non-trivial effect on how morbidity rates, mortality rates and case fatality rates (CFR) vary when there is an epidemic or pandemic. We look at the empirical... more
Epidemiological studies suggest that age distribution of a population has a non-trivial effect on how morbidity rates, mortality rates and case fatality rates (CFR) vary when there is an epidemic or pandemic. We look at the empirical evidence from a large cohort of countries to see the sensitivity of Covid-19 data to their respective median ages. The insights that emerge could be used to control for age structure effects while investigating other factors like cross-protection, comorbidities, etc.
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This paper explores a dual score system that simultaneously evaluates the relative importance of researchers and their works. It is a modification of the CITEX algorithm recently described in Pal and Ruj (2015). Using available... more
This paper explores a dual score system that simultaneously evaluates the relative importance of researchers and their works. It is a modification of the CITEX algorithm recently described in Pal and Ruj (2015). Using available publication data for $m$ author keywords (as a proxy for researchers) and $n$ papers it is possible to construct a $m \times n$ author-paper feature matrix. This is further combined with citation data to construct a HITS-like algorithm that iteratively satisfies two criteria: first, \emph{a good author is cited by good authors}, and second, \emph{a good paper is cited by good authors}. Following Pal and Ruj, the resulting algorithm produces an author eigenscore and a paper eigenscore. The algorithm is tested on 213,530 citable publications listed under Thomson ISI's "\emph{Information Science \& Library Science}" JCR category from 1980--2012.
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The merits and demerits of using additive or multiplicative rules to find a composite measure of distance for World Cup One Day International (ODI) batsmen.
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Like old soldiers, old scientists never die, their citations just fade away. Here, we propose two simple indicators, a dimensionless citation currency ratio (CCR) and a size-dependent citation currency exergy (CCX) to capture these trends... more
Like old soldiers, old scientists never die, their citations just fade away. Here, we propose two simple indicators, a dimensionless citation currency ratio (CCR) and a size-dependent citation currency exergy (CCX) to capture these trends quantitatively. We study a coherent cohort of scientists to see how this happens across the board. We use data from Google Scholar Citations and another recently published dataset called the Stanford list (Ioannidis et al. 2020) to demonstrate the applicability of these ideas.
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Covid-19 progresses roughly according to a logistical law-exponentially at first till a peak rate is reached and then the curve turns and finally levels off. In this correspondence, we identify two components-the death rate per million of... more
Covid-19 progresses roughly according to a logistical law-exponentially at first till a peak rate is reached and then the curve turns and finally levels off. In this correspondence, we identify two components-the death rate per million of population (N) and the fractional rate of change (f) at each stage. We propose a second-order indicator X = f 2 N as a single number metric summarising the criticality of the rate of progress of the pandemic at that stage. We use as example, the progress of Covid-19 within India, and show that Kerala is the state with the highest distress as the New Year turns in. Keywords Covid-19 · SARS-CoV-2 virus · death rates per million · doubling time · fractional rate of change · second-order indicator
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A very clever person (https://vividmaps.com/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago/) used the election data from the 2016 Presidential election and turned it into a topographical map of the U.S. that shows those areas that voted greater than... more
A very clever person (https://vividmaps.com/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago/) used the election data from the 2016 Presidential election and turned it into a topographical map of the U.S. that shows those areas that voted greater than 51 percent for Trump and those that voted 51 percent or more for Clinton (https://www.redmoonjournal.com/?p=1509). The visual result reproduced in Figure 1 shows that the Democratic landscape of what was once a great national party is now reduced to a dispersed archipelago of liberal islands (Clinton Archipelago) in a red sea of conservatism (TrumpLand). We use this same data to see how Covid-19 has progressed in these two republics in the run-up to the 2020 election.
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A graph theoretic approach from social network analysis allows size-dependent and size-independent bibliometric indicators to be identified from what is called the citation matrix. In an input-output sense, the number of references... more
A graph theoretic approach from social network analysis allows size-dependent and size-independent bibliometric indicators to be identified from what is called the citation matrix. In an input-output sense, the number of references becomes the size-dependent measure of the input and the number of citations received by the journal from all journals in the network becomes the size-dependent measure of the output. However, in this paper, we are interested to compare two size-independent dimensionless indicators: the Pinski-Narin Influence Weight (IW) and the Ramanujacharyulu Power-Weakness Ratio (PWR). These are proxies for the quality of the journal’s performance in the network. We show that at the non-recursive level, the two indicators are identical. At this stage these are simply measures of popularity. After recursion (i.e. repeated improvement or iteration) these become network measures of prestige of the journals. PWR is computed as a ratio of terms in the weighted citations vector and weighted references vector after the power and weakness matrices are separately recursively iterated. The Pinski-Narin procedure computes a matrix of ratios first and evaluates the IW after recursive iteration of this matrix of ratios. In this sense, the two procedures differ just like the RoA (ratio of averages) and the AoR (Average of Ratios) ways of computing relative citation indicators.
We illustrate the concepts using datasets from subgraphs of 10 statistical journals and 14 Chinese chemistry journals with network data collected from the Web of Science. We are also able to show the confounding effects when self-citations are taken into account.
We illustrate the concepts using datasets from subgraphs of 10 statistical journals and 14 Chinese chemistry journals with network data collected from the Web of Science. We are also able to show the confounding effects when self-citations are taken into account.
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A three-dimensional framework to see how Indian universities and research-focused institutions fare in the world of high end research in terms of excellence and diversity of its research base. At the country level we break down... more
A three-dimensional framework to see how Indian universities and research-focused institutions fare in the world of high end research in terms of excellence and diversity of its research base.
At the country level we break down scholarly performance into three components –
Size,
Excellence,
Balance or Evenness
At the country level we break down scholarly performance into three components –
Size,
Excellence,
Balance or Evenness
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A brief history of the least action principle
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Lectures on Finite Element Analysis from Function Space point-of-view.
Lectures on Finite Element Analysis from Function Space point-of-view.
Lectures on Finite Element Analysis from Function Space point-of-view.
Lectures on Finite Element Analysis from Function Space point-of-view.
The 51st and final match of Euro 2024 was played on 14 July 2024 at the Olympiastadion, Berlin. Spain, unbeaten in all their 7 matches and inarguably the best team in the tournament, beat England 2-1. Euro 2024 saw 24 teams play a total... more
The 51st and final match of Euro 2024 was played on 14 July 2024 at the Olympiastadion, Berlin. Spain, unbeaten in all their 7 matches and inarguably the best team in the tournament, beat England 2-1. Euro 2024 saw 24 teams play a total of 51 matches starting from 14 June to 14 July 2024. Of these, 36 matches were played in a round-robin stage, with four teams each in six groups for a total of 36 matches. Sixteen teams qualified for the knock-out stage: 8 matches in the round of 16, 4 matches in the quarter-finals, two more in the semi-finals and a grand final to determine the top team.
At the end of the day, a total of 117 goals were scored, discounting the goals in the penalty shoot-outs. More than 50 years ago, an Indian mathematician named Ramanujacharyulu (C. Ramanujacharyulu, Analysis of preferential experiments, Psychometrika, 3 (1964), pp. 257-261) introduced a protocol which allows us to reconcile the results of a group of teams and their matches playing a tournament, and choose the winner, or rank them in an order. Each team meets the other team (the paired comparison) once or several times and registers a result each time – a win, a tie or draw, or a loss. That is each of the matches is considered to be an experiment, and the result, an expressed preference for one team over the other. With this knowledge, we can construct the tournament matrices based on the actual goals scored and conceded. This tournament metaphor can be used to evaluate the rankings at the end of the tournament, even if each team has not met the other even once, as is the case here.
At the end of the day, a total of 117 goals were scored, discounting the goals in the penalty shoot-outs. More than 50 years ago, an Indian mathematician named Ramanujacharyulu (C. Ramanujacharyulu, Analysis of preferential experiments, Psychometrika, 3 (1964), pp. 257-261) introduced a protocol which allows us to reconcile the results of a group of teams and their matches playing a tournament, and choose the winner, or rank them in an order. Each team meets the other team (the paired comparison) once or several times and registers a result each time – a win, a tie or draw, or a loss. That is each of the matches is considered to be an experiment, and the result, an expressed preference for one team over the other. With this knowledge, we can construct the tournament matrices based on the actual goals scored and conceded. This tournament metaphor can be used to evaluate the rankings at the end of the tournament, even if each team has not met the other even once, as is the case here.
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The 48 th edition of the 2024 Copa America concluded on July 14, 2024. In the 32 nd and final match at the Hard Rock Stadium in Maimi Gardens, Florida, Argentina won a record 16 th title beating Colombia 1-0 in a match that went into... more
The 48 th edition of the 2024 Copa America concluded on July 14, 2024. In the 32 nd and final match at the Hard Rock Stadium in Maimi Gardens, Florida, Argentina won a record 16 th title beating Colombia 1-0 in a match that went into extra time. They were unbeaten having won 5 matches and being held to a 1-1 draw by Ecuador in a quarterfinal match. From June 20 to July 14, 16 teams played a total of 32 matches. Of these, 24 matches were played in a roundrobin stage, with four teams each in four groups. Eight teams qualified for the knockout stage: 4 matches in the quarter-finals, two more in the semifinals , a match for third and fourth places, and the final to determine the top team.
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The Premier League 2023-24 came to an end on 19 May 2024. The twenty teams played each other twice for a total of 380 matches and a total of 1246 goals were scored. Since each win counted for 3 points and a draw gave a point each to the... more
The Premier League 2023-24 came to an end on 19 May 2024. The twenty teams played each other twice for a total of 380 matches and a total of 1246 goals were scored. Since each win counted for 3 points and a draw gave a point each to the teams concerned, Manchester City won the tournament with 91 points, just two ahead of Arsenal. Note that whatever the scoreline, 1-0 or 7-0, a win counts as 3-0. Similarly, a 0-0 or 5-5 draw will count as 1-1. So, what if a goal-based scoring system were to have been adopted: Would City have ranked at the top?
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Hosts and defending champions Qatar successfully retained the 2023 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_AFC_Asian_Cup), defeating Jordan 3-1 in the final. Altogether 24 teams played 51 matches... more
Hosts and defending champions Qatar successfully retained the 2023 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_AFC_Asian_Cup), defeating Jordan 3-1 in the final. Altogether 24 teams played 51 matches and a total of 132 goals were scored. But was Jordan the second-best team?
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A Theory of Performance (ToP) analysis shows that the real winner of Kerala Kalolsavam 2024 was Wayanad.
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The Hindi Heartland (also known as the Hindi Belt) comprises several states whose lingua franca is Hindi. For quite some time now, the electoral mandate in these states has been dominated by caste-based politics, and this seems to have... more
The Hindi Heartland (also known as the Hindi Belt) comprises several states whose lingua franca is Hindi. For quite some time now, the electoral mandate in these states has been dominated by caste-based politics, and this seems to have continued in the three states, namely Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, that went to the polls recently.
The Hindu reported on the social basis of voting in these states:
Chhattisgarh - (Sandeep Shastri, Sanjay Kumar, and Suhas Palshikar, In Chhattisgarh, lack of jobs, price rise, and corruption bring down Congress government, Friday, December 8, 2023)
Madhya Pradesh - (Sanjay Kumar, Suhas Palshikar, Yatindar Singh Sisodia, and Sandeep Shastri, How BJP worked to retain Madhya Pradesh, Thursday, December 7, 2023)
Rajasthan - (Sanjay Lodha, Sandeep Shastri, Suhas Palshikar, and Sanjay Kumar, Why the Congress lost Rajasthan, Wednesday, December 6, 2023).
These three reports, as well as a fourth on Telangana (not discussed here), used data from the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll surveys. The analyses were accompanied by well curated tabular results. All intersections were considered (age demographics, gender, educational levels, rural-urban divide, economic levels, and of course, caste). In each case, the consideration was mainly about how the various categories voted differentially for various major political parties and their alliances. However, in what follows, we shall only look at how caste identity groups have voted differentially in these elections.
In this article, I borrow ideas from econometrics to show that the presentation can be made graphically more appealing, and cognitively more meaningful, by using the Lorenz curve. I also introduce two new measures of polarization – a Leverage term of Polarization (LoP) and an Index of Polarization (IoP), and use a well know cosine measure of similarity, as single number measures of the extent and direction of polarization. Also, the difference in directions of polarization between two groups for a given party can be measured using a cosine similarity measure.
The Hindu reported on the social basis of voting in these states:
Chhattisgarh - (Sandeep Shastri, Sanjay Kumar, and Suhas Palshikar, In Chhattisgarh, lack of jobs, price rise, and corruption bring down Congress government, Friday, December 8, 2023)
Madhya Pradesh - (Sanjay Kumar, Suhas Palshikar, Yatindar Singh Sisodia, and Sandeep Shastri, How BJP worked to retain Madhya Pradesh, Thursday, December 7, 2023)
Rajasthan - (Sanjay Lodha, Sandeep Shastri, Suhas Palshikar, and Sanjay Kumar, Why the Congress lost Rajasthan, Wednesday, December 6, 2023).
These three reports, as well as a fourth on Telangana (not discussed here), used data from the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll surveys. The analyses were accompanied by well curated tabular results. All intersections were considered (age demographics, gender, educational levels, rural-urban divide, economic levels, and of course, caste). In each case, the consideration was mainly about how the various categories voted differentially for various major political parties and their alliances. However, in what follows, we shall only look at how caste identity groups have voted differentially in these elections.
In this article, I borrow ideas from econometrics to show that the presentation can be made graphically more appealing, and cognitively more meaningful, by using the Lorenz curve. I also introduce two new measures of polarization – a Leverage term of Polarization (LoP) and an Index of Polarization (IoP), and use a well know cosine measure of similarity, as single number measures of the extent and direction of polarization. Also, the difference in directions of polarization between two groups for a given party can be measured using a cosine similarity measure.
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The Hindu reported on the social basis of voting (Sandeep Shastri, Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar, and Vageeshan Harathi, Winds of Change in Telangana, Tuesday, December 5, 2023) using data from the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey. The... more
The Hindu reported on the social basis of voting (Sandeep Shastri, Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar, and Vageeshan Harathi, Winds of Change in Telangana, Tuesday, December 5, 2023) using data from the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey. The analysis is accompanied by well curated tabular results. The consideration is mainly about how identity and pressure groups have voted differentially for the various political alliances.
In this article, I borrow ideas from econometrics to show that the presentation can be made graphically more appealing, and cognitively more meaningful, by using the Lorenz curve. I also introduce two new measures of polarization – a Leverage term and an Index of Polarization. Also, the difference in directions of polarization between two groups for a given party can be measured using a cosine similarity measure.
In this article, I borrow ideas from econometrics to show that the presentation can be made graphically more appealing, and cognitively more meaningful, by using the Lorenz curve. I also introduce two new measures of polarization – a Leverage term and an Index of Polarization. Also, the difference in directions of polarization between two groups for a given party can be measured using a cosine similarity measure.
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We make a comparative study of research in G20 countries.
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We use graph theoretical arguments to show that India was the best team in 2023, just as it was four year earlier in the 2019 edition.
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Ten national teams will go into the 2023 ICC Men's Cricket ODI World Cup, to be held from 5 October to 19 November 2023. This will be the 13th edition of a quadrennial One Day International (ODI) cricket tournament organised by the... more
Ten national teams will go into the 2023 ICC Men's Cricket ODI World Cup, to be held from 5 October to 19 November 2023. This will be the 13th edition of a quadrennial One Day International (ODI) cricket tournament organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The teams are: Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Let us see how the teams are placed using what I call Ramanujacharyulu’s (henceforth Ram) tournament metaphor, taking into consideration their Head-to-Head encounters so far in this format.
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The time dimension rarely enters into the bibliometric discourse. But this is possible in a very simple and neat way if the arithmetical rule of three (Prathap 2006, 2016) is introduced. It is the time it takes for an average scientist or... more
The time dimension rarely enters into the bibliometric discourse. But this is possible in a very simple and neat way if the arithmetical rule of three (Prathap 2006, 2016) is introduced. It is the time it takes for an average scientist or author (Fulltime Equivalent Researcher or FTER) to publish a paper. Its inverse is also a proxy for the efficiency or velocity of research publication in terms of FTER time to finish a given quantum of work and get it published.
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The FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023™ kicked off on 20 July with the official slogan Beyond Greatness. After 64 matches (48 as round-robin in eight groups of four teams each) and another 16 in the knockout stage to... more
The FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023™ kicked off on 20 July with the official slogan Beyond Greatness. After 64 matches (48 as round-robin in eight groups of four teams each) and another 16 in the knockout stage to determine the top four places, Spain has been crowned the queens of football. If Spain was great, then was Japan beyond greatness? They won all their matches in Group C, beat Spain 4-0 on 31 July 2023 and topped the Group with the full 9 points from 3 matches with 11 goals for and none against. No other team topped a group in such a comprehensive way.
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Colleges contribute the highest number of graduates but only a small portion of the country's academic research output. In this study, we shall report on the data from the latest All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE 2020-21). We... more
Colleges contribute the highest number of graduates but only a small portion of the country's academic research output. In this study, we shall report on the data from the latest All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE 2020-21). We argue that it would make sense to discourage the proliferation of colleges and move to a largely university model of higher education as envisaged in NEP 2020.
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We follow the protocol used in our earlier studies to see how leading higher educational institutions (HEIs) in India have been faring during this period, as compared to the comparators from China.
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We propose an improvement of the recently introduced individual hi-index by incorporating two additional conditions: the conservation of counts of fractionalized publications as a measure of quantity and the dimensionally consistent use... more
We propose an improvement of the recently introduced individual hi-index by incorporating two additional conditions: the conservation of counts of fractionalized publications as a measure of quantity and the dimensionally consistent use of impact as an intensive measure of quality. As the two measures are then dimensionally homogenous, the heuristic trade-off between quality and quantity can be reliably used to compute the improved hi-index.
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The Gini index or coefficient is the most popular approach to measure inequality. In conjunction with the Lorenz curve, it has a heuristic provenance and does not originate from first principles. But once defined, it also leads easily to... more
The Gini index or coefficient is the most popular approach to measure inequality. In conjunction with the Lorenz curve, it has a heuristic provenance and does not originate from first principles. But once defined, it also leads easily to a measure of evenness or balance. In this paper, we compare this with another indicator which we shall call for easy reference as the Gipi index which comes naturally from a thermodynamic perspective and leads to simple dimensionless measures of inequality, and hence of balance and evenness, with values that range from 0 (perfect equality, balance or evenness) to 1 (perfect inequality, unevenness or absolute concentration). The Gipi index emerges from a thermodynamically intuitive weighting of the distribution to get second-order energy like terms. In contrast, the Gini index can be interpreted as a non-intuitive way of weighting the distribution where the second-order terms are not energy terms in the classical physics definition. However, both indicators have the invariance properties and sensitivity to the transfer requirements expected of any good inequality or evenness indicator.
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Ireland won the Guinness 2023 Six Nations Championship. We review the performance from a graph theoretical point of view.
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ChatGPT is a 'large language model' system based on neural networks that learns by digesting huge amounts of existing human-generated text and can create realistic and intelligent responses to prompts from a user. A sophisticated user can... more
ChatGPT is a 'large language model' system based on neural networks that learns by digesting huge amounts of existing human-generated text and can create realistic and intelligent responses to prompts from a user. A sophisticated user can conduct a Socratic dialogue with it and learn and teach at the same time. In this paper we present a dialogue on h-type indices that may be of use to authors, readers and reviewers in the area of bibliometrics.
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The Hockey World Cup 2023 is re-examined using Ramanujacharyulu's Power-Weakness approach.
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When Argentina lifted the World Cup a total of 172 goals were scored in 64 matches by the 32 teams that participated, for an average of 2.69 goals per match. This total was the largest in a single edition of the World Cup. What if a... more
When Argentina lifted the World Cup a total of 172 goals were scored in 64 matches by the 32 teams that participated, for an average of 2.69 goals per match. This total was the largest in a single edition of the World Cup. What if a goal-based scoring system were to have been adopted: Would Argentina have ranked at the top? The problem is complex.
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The greatest show on earth" has just completed the group stage on 02 December 2022. In eight groups of four teams each, we saw 32 teams play 48 matches, starting from 20 November and ending with the final group stage match on 02 December.... more
The greatest show on earth" has just completed the group stage on 02 December 2022. In eight groups of four teams each, we saw 32 teams play 48 matches, starting from 20 November and ending with the final group stage match on 02 December. Two teams qualified from each group for the knockout stage. A very complex 8-step protocol is used to determine the teams to advance to the knockout stage (2022 FIFA World Cup-Wikipedia):
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The longitudinal variation of Covid-19 metrics in terms of cases, deaths, etc. is well documented. This is not true regarding the spatial variation when regions are stratified according to geographical or geopolitical areas. In this... more
The longitudinal variation of Covid-19 metrics in terms of cases, deaths, etc. is well documented. This is not true regarding the spatial variation when regions are stratified according to geographical or geopolitical areas. In this study, using raw and per capita metrics, we see how the diffusion of Covid-19 as a pandemic has taken place across continents and within continents at country scales. We find that Europe, North America and South America have reached relatively high evenness of spread, but in Asia and Africa, there is still much larger concentration in a few areas.
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At the time of writing, the 2021 ICC T20 World Cup is finally over. Here, we propose an alternate scoring system to find the winner.
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IPL 14 2021 - the final assessment after 120 matches
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Comparative research evaluation of the output of states and union territories is usually based on the geographical location of its institutions. In most cases these are funded by the Union government and only a small fraction comes from... more
Comparative research evaluation of the output of states and union territories is usually based on the geographical location of its institutions. In most cases these are funded by the Union government and only a small fraction comes from purely state based or private actors. In this paper we look at the 132 institutions and agencies in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in each of at least seventeen subject areas, in the Excellence
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India's performance at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 is reviewed relative to its performance in S&T.
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Euro 2020 through the Power-Weakness iteration
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The Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2019-20 For States And Union Territories (henceforth PGI) was released on June 6, 2021. A metrician looking at the set of 70 parameters in PGI and the way these are sliced and chopped (if all... more
The Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2019-20 For States And Union Territories (henceforth PGI) was released on June 6, 2021. A metrician looking at the set of 70 parameters in PGI and the way these are sliced and chopped (if all sub-indicators are also counted, the total number of parameters considered in the PGI becomes 96) and added up to a total score will realize that it was done by analytically and philosophically innocent minds.
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There are 132 institutions and agencies in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in each of at least seventeen subject areas, up from the 121 institutions/agencies that were in India when the last curation was... more
There are 132 institutions and agencies in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in each of at least seventeen subject areas, up from the 121 institutions/agencies that were in India when the last curation was done for the 2011-15 window in the Excellence Mapping (EM) initiative. These institutions are distributed across 20 states and union territories while the agencies have a Pan-India character with multiple sub-institutions and centres distributed across India. The Council of Scientific Research (CSIR) is such a pan-India agency that stands out at the top. We look at how the states have fared relative to each other. For this, we use the total count of papers P and scalar sum of exergies X to compute an average Best Paper Rate (q = BPR) for each region. Using P as a proxy for quantity and q = BPR as a proxy for quality of academic research, we can track the performance trajectories of the various regions in the quality-quantity space.
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There are 10 institutions in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in each of at least ten subject areas, up from the 8 institutions that were in India when the last curation was done for the 2011-15 window in the... more
There are 10 institutions in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in each of at least ten subject areas, up from the 8 institutions that were in India when the last curation was done for the 2011-15 window in the Excellence Mapping initiative. The Council of Scientific Research (CSIR) stands out at the top, followed by four IITs and the IISc, and these are followed by four universities. We use the total count of papers P and scalar sum of exergies X to compute an average Best Paper Rate (BPR) for each institution. Using P as a proxy for quantity and BPR as a proxy for quality of academic research, we can track the performance trajectories of the various institutions in the quality-quantity space.
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There are 47 institutions in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in medical research, up from the 35 institutions that were in India when the last curation was done for the 2011-15 window. The Council of... more
There are 47 institutions in India which have published more than 500 papers during 2012-16 in medical research, up from the 35 institutions that were in India when the last curation was done for the 2011-15 window. The Council of Scientific Research (CSIR) accounts for 9.2% of the output but 23.5% of the second-order exergy indicator, far ahead of even the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) or the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). A remarkable new entry into the top ranks is the academic wing of CSIR, the Academy of Scientific Innovation & Research (AcSIR), which accounts for 0.94% of the output but 4.05% of the exergy because of its high best paper rate.
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The polarization seen in the recent Kerala state elections is visualized using Lorenz curves.
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The 2021 version of the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) is now online. As in earlier years, we study the progress of state-wise contributions of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) to India’s presence from 2016 to 2021.... more
The 2021 version of the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) is now online. As in earlier years, we study the progress of state-wise contributions of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) to India’s presence from 2016 to 2021. Sector-wise, these elite research-intensive institutions belonging to the Higher Education sector are the biggest contributor to India’s academic research output.
Research Interests:
The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) classifies and ranks academic and research-related institutions using a composite indicator that combines three different sets of indicators based on research performance, innovation outputs and... more
The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) classifies and ranks academic and research-related institutions using a composite indicator that combines three different sets of indicators based on research performance, innovation outputs and societal impact measured by their web visibility. Institutions can be also grouped by sectors: Universities, Health, Government, Private and Other. Here, we are interested in the CSIR and how they fare vis-à-vis other Indian institutions in the Government sector.
Research Interests:
Educational and wealth inequality in India
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For reasons still not clear, in many parts of the world, many more have died in a year due to Covid-19 than due to Influenza like Illnesses (ILI). At the same time in many other regions, only a tiny fraction, sometimes less than a... more
For reasons still not clear, in many parts of the world, many more have died in a year due to Covid-19 than due to Influenza like Illnesses (ILI). At the same time in many other regions, only a tiny fraction, sometimes less than a hundred, have died due to Covid-19 compared to ILI. We use this multiplier as a criterion to separate the pandemic regions from the non-pandemic regions and observe that in many regions, there has been an unnecessary panic response in imposing lockdown regimes that have devastated economies and livelihoods and caused other vulnerabilities.
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Covid-19 progresses roughly according to a logistical law-exponentially at first till a peak rate is reached and then the curve turns and finally levels off. In this correspondence, we identify two components-the death rate per million of... more
Covid-19 progresses roughly according to a logistical law-exponentially at first till a peak rate is reached and then the curve turns and finally levels off. In this correspondence, we identify two components-the death rate per million of population (N) and the fractional rate of change (f) at each stage. We propose a second-order indicator X = f 2 N as a single number metric summarising the criticality of the rate of progress of the pandemic at that stage. We use as example, the progress of Covid-19 within India, and show that Kerala is the state with the highest distress as the New Year turns in. Keywords Covid-19 · SARS-CoV-2 virus · death rates per million · doubling time · fractional rate of change · second-order indicator
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Like old soldiers, old scientists never die, their citations just fade away. Here, we propose two simple indicators, a dimensionless citation currency ratio (CCR) and a size-dependent citation currency exergy (CCX) to capture these trends... more
Like old soldiers, old scientists never die, their citations just fade away. Here, we propose two simple indicators, a dimensionless citation currency ratio (CCR) and a size-dependent citation currency exergy (CCX) to capture these trends quantitatively. We study a coherent cohort of scientists to see how this happens across the board. We use data from Google Scholar Citations and another recently published dataset called the Stanford list (Ioannidis et al. 2020) to demonstrate the applicability of these ideas.
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We assess the research performance of the IITs using the Stanford Lists (Ioannidis et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918) along with their open access databases (at (https://dx.doi.org/10.17632/btchxktzyw). Altogether... more
We assess the research performance of the IITs using the Stanford Lists (Ioannidis et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918) along with their open access databases (at (https://dx.doi.org/10.17632/btchxktzyw). Altogether there are 514 unique individuals that appear in both lists together, with 445 in the Single Year list and 294 in the Career List. Of the 514, 220 are rising stars, 225 are steady stars and 69 are fading stars. This is an encouraging sign in that the IIT system is recognising and inducting a large number of promising young scientists.
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We assess the research performance of the GCC countries using the Stanford Lists (Ioannidis et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918) along with their open
access databases (at (https://dx.doi.org/10.17632/btchxktzyw).
access databases (at (https://dx.doi.org/10.17632/btchxktzyw).
Research Interests:
Covid-19 progresses roughly according to a logistical law-exponentially at first till a peak rate is reached and then the curve turns and finally levels off. In this paper, we identify two components-the death rate per million of... more
Covid-19 progresses roughly according to a logistical law-exponentially at first till a peak rate is reached and then the curve turns and finally levels off. In this paper, we identify two components-the death rate per million of population (N) and the fractional rate of change (f) at each stage. We propose a second-order indicator X = f 2 N as a single number metric summarising the criticality of the rate of progress of the pandemic at that stage. We use as examples, the progress of Covid-19 globally, within India, and within the USA. Keywords Covid-19 · SARS-CoV-2 virus · death rates per million · doubling time · fractional rate of change · second-order indicator
Research Interests:
More than 50 years ago, an Indian mathematician (now they would have called him a computer scientist or data analyst) named Ramanujacharyulu (C. Ramanujacharyulu, Analysis of preferential experiments, Psychometrika, 3 (1964), pp. 257-261)... more
More than 50 years ago, an Indian mathematician (now they would have called him a computer scientist or data analyst) named Ramanujacharyulu (C. Ramanujacharyulu, Analysis of preferential experiments, Psychometrika, 3 (1964), pp. 257-261) introduced a protocol which allows us to reconcile the results of a group of teams and their matches playing a tournament, and choose the winner, or rank them in an order. This is a paired-comparison problem. Each team meets the other team (the paired comparison) once or several times and registers a result each time-a win, a tie or draw, or a loss. Yet the world of sports, and indeed, even the world of science, has been slow to receive and use this simple idea. Instead a much simpler, but more simplistic idea is used to choose the winner, or the best teams to go to another round. We have used Ram's protocol in earlier issues of Science Reporter (https://sciencereporter.niscair.res.in/) to confirm that the "best" teams of the respective tournaments did actually win, but with some changes in the rankings lower down. We return this year with Ramanujacharyulu's tournament metaphor to review the results of IPL 13 2020. The IPL is played over three distinct stages. In Round 1 and Round 2, the eight teams play each other once, and again once more. Thus, there are 28 matches in each round for what is called the round-robin stage, i.e. in 56 matches, each team had to play the other twice. At the end of this stage, the four "best" teams are identified to go to Round 3, called the playoff rounds. Right now, oblivious to the science of Ram's work, an overly simplistic count is done by the IPL organizers. Each win is counted as being worth 2 points. If there is a tie (this year, this has been eliminated using what are called the super overs), then the points are shared. Even at this stage, if two teams remain tied, a superior run rate is used. Nothing can be more unscientific than this and yet it continues to be used.
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Sri Lanka and Kerala are remarkably similar to each other in many respects. Yet their response to Covid-19 shows very clear differences.
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Indian Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) have not fared significantly better in the Sciences in the Shanghai Rankings 2020 when compared to an earlier year. India now has a presence in only seventeen of the thirty-two subject areas... more
Indian Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) have not fared significantly better in the Sciences in the Shanghai Rankings 2020 when compared to an earlier year. India now has a presence in only seventeen of the thirty-two subject areas in which there are institutes globally that meet the required Shanghai Rankings threshold for that area. In the four Science fields, it has no institution which can be counted in fifteen subjects. India's science research base is mainly skewed towards the natural sciences, has a barely passable performance in the life and medical sciences field, and that in the social and life sciences is very dismal.
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Indian Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) have not fared significantly better in the Shanghai Rankings 2020 when compared to immediately preceding years. India now has a presence in seventeen of the twenty-two subject areas in... more
Indian Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) have not fared significantly better in the Shanghai Rankings 2020 when compared to immediately preceding years. India now has a presence in seventeen of the twenty-two subject areas in Engineering in which there are institutes globally that meet the required Shanghai Rankings threshold for that area. It has no institution which can be counted at this level of size and excellence in five subjects in the Engineering field in 2020: Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Environmental Science & Engineering, Remote Sensing and Transportation Science & Technology.
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A very clever person (https://vividmaps.com/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago/) used the election data from the 2016 Presidential election and turned it into a topographical map of the U.S. that shows those areas that voted greater than... more
A very clever person (https://vividmaps.com/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago/) used the election data from the 2016 Presidential election and turned it into a topographical map of the U.S. that shows those areas that voted greater than 51 percent for Trump and those that voted 51 percent or more for Clinton (https://www.redmoonjournal.com/?p=1509). The visual result reproduced in Figure 1 shows that the Democratic landscape of what was once a great national party is now reduced to a dispersed archipelago of liberal islands (Clinton Archipelago) in a red sea of conservatism (TrumpLand). We use this same data to see how Covid-19 has progressed in these two republics in the run-up to the 2020 election.
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The rapid growth of epidemics is usually characterized mathematically using exponential forms. In this paper, instead of using doubling times, we use a more general form of a multiplying rate over a fixed interval to characterise the... more
The rapid growth of epidemics is usually characterized mathematically using exponential forms. In this paper, instead of using doubling times, we use a more general form of a multiplying rate over a fixed interval to characterise the growth. It is seen that the scatter plots of multiplying rates with deaths per million yield funnel plots which allow outliers to be identified.
Keywords Covid-19 · SARS-CoV-2 virus· death rates · doubling time · multiplying rate · funnel plots
Keywords Covid-19 · SARS-CoV-2 virus· death rates · doubling time · multiplying rate · funnel plots
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The datasets from the 2016 to 2020 releases of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) reveal that Tamil Nadu stands head and shoulders above the other states and union territories of India. A very lazy but probably... more
The datasets from the 2016 to 2020 releases of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) reveal that Tamil Nadu stands head and shoulders above the other states and union territories of India. A very lazy but probably parsimonious and true explanation comes to mind – for more than eight decades, Tamil Nadu has been steadfast in its commitment to the two-language formula. Is this the explanation?
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There is an inverse relationship between the number of deaths per capita in each country due to Influenza-Pneumonia and the cumulative progress of deaths per capita in each country from Covid-19. That is, countries which have high... more
There is an inverse relationship between the number of deaths per
capita in each country due to Influenza-Pneumonia and the cumulative progress of deaths per capita in each country from Covid-19. That is, countries which have high mortality rates due to Influenza-
Pneumonia have been registering much lower Covid-19 mortality rates (a tenth to a hundredth) than countries where influenza-pneumonia mortality is low, perhaps due to extensive vaccination coverage and better health care facilities (physicians, hospital beds, etc.) It will be interesting to see where Covid-19 is deadlier than Influenza-Pneumonia.
capita in each country due to Influenza-Pneumonia and the cumulative progress of deaths per capita in each country from Covid-19. That is, countries which have high mortality rates due to Influenza-
Pneumonia have been registering much lower Covid-19 mortality rates (a tenth to a hundredth) than countries where influenza-pneumonia mortality is low, perhaps due to extensive vaccination coverage and better health care facilities (physicians, hospital beds, etc.) It will be interesting to see where Covid-19 is deadlier than Influenza-Pneumonia.
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TRANSPARENT RANKING (TR) is a citation based globally ranked list of higher educational institutions based on the institutional aggregation of profiles created by individuals using citation data harvested by Google Scholar Citations... more
TRANSPARENT RANKING (TR) is a citation based globally ranked list of higher educational institutions based on the institutional aggregation of profiles created by individuals using citation data harvested by Google Scholar Citations (GSC). In 2020, India accounted for 10% of the global count of institutions (439 out of 4404) in TR but only 1.5% of the total global citations. It is known that scientific activity is always concentrated in a few premier institutions and this leads to a great inequality of distribution of excellence. In the present study, we look at the city-wise and state-wise dispersion of the 439 institutions in India and confirm that this effect of concentration and inequality is seen at the country level.
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An inspirational book, now out of print by Dr Kurt Kauffmann on "the process by which thoughts are created."
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In the modern world, the fields of science and technology have made significant progress. These significant and rapid progress is primarily due to the advancements in computational capabilities. Traditionally, the testing of scientific... more
In the modern world, the fields of science and technology have made significant progress. These significant and rapid progress is primarily due to the advancements in computational capabilities. Traditionally, the testing of scientific laws and engineering principles is done heavily on laboratory experiments. However, these experiments often had limitations when it came to simulating complex real-world scenarios and accounting for all possible variations. This posed a challenge in accurately simulating and drawing a deeper understanding of these derived theories. To bridge this gap between theoretical knowledge and practical applications, computational science has emerged as a powerful tool. With the advent of sensor technologies, powerful computing hardware, and rigorous mathematical algorithms, scientists and researchers now have the tools to tackle complex systems with great accuracy close to reality. These have enabled the treatment of underlying phenomena with greater precision than ever before. Consequently, there has been a paradigm shift in the way we approach scientific exploration. This integrates advanced computational techniques and vast amounts of data into the logic of discovery and the logic of justification. We now see data-driven approaches, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) driving scientific research forward. Computational science has already shown that it is a bridge that connects the fundamental understanding of scientific principles with real-world evidence. It allows researchers to validate hypotheses, make predictions, and gain deeper insights and come to a consensus of complex phenomena. The workshop titled "Conjectures to Consilience through Computation" is centered around this understanding of the key role of computation in science. It aims to delve into the intersection of computational science, theoretical and philosophical conjectures, and empirical evidence, and ultimately seeking convergence of knowledge across disciplines.