4 ms·

We had visiting scholars from some of China's best institutions, they didn't know what a Fourier transform was. They couldn't write MATLAB because they always h

We had visiting scholars from some of China's best institutions, they didn't know what a Fourier transform was. They couldn't write MATLAB because they always had somebody else do it for them. I would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals.

golergka 11y ago
What field? Signal processing or psychology?
nl 11y ago
OTOH, we have a regular internship program and we get a lot of Chinese students. There is a big variety of course, but the best are very, very good. I find it difficult to believe that a graduate of Tsinghua or Peking wouldn't know what a Fourier transform was assuming they did a course where they learnt that?
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Tsinghua and PKU undergraduates > grad students (in general, not necessarily). The problem is that most of the undergraduates go abroad for grad studies, so they get grad students mostly from 2nd tier schools. Now, China is large, and there are still a lot of good students for grad studies, but the best are already gone. China is also EXTREMELY hierarchical. So, it is quite possible that a scholar (researcher, professor) with a very strong CV isn't doing much of the real work at all, instead it is pawned off to undergrad and grad students.
  - coolswan 11y ago
    basically how US academia works. professors don't do the programming themselves. that's what graduate students are for.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      No. Professors in the US generally spend lots of time managing their grad students and guiding their research, but not saying "here is my idea, go make it work;" they might help with writing papers and that is about it (also, I know many professors that still write their own code for their own ideas, and limit their advising student counts to do that). In China, you'll often have one professor for around 50 students with three tiers (undergrads, masters/entry PhD/high-level PhDs). So not only is the professor not programming, but neither is the upper-level PhD student! Everything is just eventually being done by undergrads who will ship off to the states/west anyways. On top of this many professors are often basically running sweatshops for their side businesses (since their university provided salary can be around 10K RMB/month).
- qrendel 11y ago
  OTOH the best students are more likely to be accepted internationally, and you're selecting from 19% of the world's population, so I'd expect the best to be very, very good. At that point it's almost like saying "the best students in half the Eastern hemisphere are very, very good."
Captain_Usher 11y ago
This makes no sense. I have an American degree and I've heard the phrase "Fourier transform" before, but I couldn't have possibly told you anything about it until I googled it just now. I wouldn't have expected any random Chinese academic to know either, no matter how good their institution was. I write software in a variety of languages every day at my full-time job, and while I've seen MATLAB code and could certainly teach myself to write it, I wouldn't bother if I could just have somebody else do it. Why would you expect some arbitrary group of Chinese scholars to share very specific skills and knowledge? If you gathered up a gaggle of researchers from anywhere else, you'd have to get pretty lucky to land a group where everybody was familiar with both one specific area of mathematics and one specific programming language.
- 67726e 11y ago
  Maybe take the charitable view that these visiting academics were in a field where this is surprising and expected knowledge. I don't get the feeling these were English majors.
- greggarious 11y ago
  The fact he mentions this and MATLAB makes me think he's in the field of electrical engineering, where FTs are something you definitely need to understand.
whazor 11y ago
My experience is that Chinese are very hard working. Their mathematics background is normally quite good, but they only know the Chinese names... Try going to the English wiki page of for example a Fourier transform, then click on the Chinese version.
kaybe 11y ago
Which field are you in?
tokenadult 11y ago
We had visiting scholars from some of China's best institutions Which Chinese institutions, studying what subject? And, for that matter, who is "we" here? Is your institution a top destination for overseas visits by Chinese scholars? I would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals. Mentioning Nature (the place of publication of the thread-opening commentary) is worthwhile. It appears that Nature has had some submissions from China recently that have had to be withdrawn because the peer review process was compromised.[1] [1] "'Compromised' peer review hits three papers from Nature Publishing Group" (18 December 2015) http://retractionwatch.com/2015/12/18/compromised-peer-review-hits-three-papers-from-nature-publishing-group/ http://retractionwatch.com/2015/12/18/compromised-peer-revie...

golergka 11y ago

What field? Signal processing or psychology?

nl 11y ago

OTOH, we have a regular internship program and we get a lot of Chinese students. There is a big variety of course, but the best are very, very good. I find it difficult to believe that a graduate of Tsinghua or Peking wouldn't know what a Fourier transform was assuming they did a course where they learnt that?

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Tsinghua and PKU undergraduates > grad students (in general, not necessarily). The problem is that most of the undergraduates go abroad for grad studies, so they get grad students mostly from 2nd tier schools. Now, China is large, and there are still a lot of good students for grad studies, but the best are already gone. China is also EXTREMELY hierarchical. So, it is quite possible that a scholar (researcher, professor) with a very strong CV isn't doing much of the real work at all, instead it is pawned off to undergrad and grad students.
- coolswan 11y ago
  basically how US academia works. professors don't do the programming themselves. that's what graduate students are for.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    No. Professors in the US generally spend lots of time managing their grad students and guiding their research, but not saying "here is my idea, go make it work;" they might help with writing papers and that is about it (also, I know many professors that still write their own code for their own ideas, and limit their advising student counts to do that). In China, you'll often have one professor for around 50 students with three tiers (undergrads, masters/entry PhD/high-level PhDs). So not only is the professor not programming, but neither is the upper-level PhD student! Everything is just eventually being done by undergrads who will ship off to the states/west anyways. On top of this many professors are often basically running sweatshops for their side businesses (since their university provided salary can be around 10K RMB/month).
qrendel 11y ago
OTOH the best students are more likely to be accepted internationally, and you're selecting from 19% of the world's population, so I'd expect the best to be very, very good. At that point it's almost like saying "the best students in half the Eastern hemisphere are very, very good."

Captain_Usher 11y ago

This makes no sense. I have an American degree and I've heard the phrase "Fourier transform" before, but I couldn't have possibly told you anything about it until I googled it just now. I wouldn't have expected any random Chinese academic to know either, no matter how good their institution was. I write software in a variety of languages every day at my full-time job, and while I've seen MATLAB code and could certainly teach myself to write it, I wouldn't bother if I could just have somebody else do it. Why would you expect some arbitrary group of Chinese scholars to share very specific skills and knowledge? If you gathered up a gaggle of researchers from anywhere else, you'd have to get pretty lucky to land a group where everybody was familiar with both one specific area of mathematics and one specific programming language.

67726e 11y ago
Maybe take the charitable view that these visiting academics were in a field where this is surprising and expected knowledge. I don't get the feeling these were English majors.
greggarious 11y ago
The fact he mentions this and MATLAB makes me think he's in the field of electrical engineering, where FTs are something you definitely need to understand.

whazor 11y ago

My experience is that Chinese are very hard working. Their mathematics background is normally quite good, but they only know the Chinese names... Try going to the English wiki page of for example a Fourier transform, then click on the Chinese version.

kaybe 11y ago

Which field are you in?

tokenadult 11y ago

We had visiting scholars from some of China's best institutions Which Chinese institutions, studying what subject? And, for that matter, who is "we" here? Is your institution a top destination for overseas visits by Chinese scholars? I would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals. Mentioning Nature (the place of publication of the thread-opening commentary) is worthwhile. It appears that Nature has had some submissions from China recently that have had to be withdrawn because the peer review process was compromised.[1] [1] "'Compromised' peer review hits three papers from Nature Publishing Group" (18 December 2015) http://retractionwatch.com/2015/12/18/compromised-peer-review-hits-three-papers-from-nature-publishing-group/ http://retractionwatch.com/2015/12/18/compromised-peer-revie...