Regardless of what Thomson company says about India's top ranking
http://www.in-cites.com/research/2004/november_15_2004-1.html
- my view is as follows:
Borrowing from western students' terminology I say Indian research sucks. After
six college courses (incl last two at Harvard) I still have to review wikipedia
to realize I have so many gaps to fill before I can think of becoming a
researcher who can design a research methodology on his own.
All I can say is that I agree with my techie roommates that India stands and
deserves to stand that 100th place in research among world's countries (out of
200 approx).
The college courses taught something which can now easily be done using
computer software - what they did not specify (enough) was how and when to use
these calculation tools (algorithms). They do/did not specify which route to
take to reach your destination - whereby you do not reach someplace else. For
example, if I need to use cluster sampling given space time constraint and I
use some other type - and later use some test which even the professor (in
India mostly) is not sure about then ultimately a Harvard or Stanford or even a
US community college researcher would point out " Your research is not rigorous
enough!!!" whatever that may mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28statistics%29
However, what the textbooks written by Indian professors (mostly designed to
help the student clear the annual exams with flying colors) could not teach the
wiki helps you learn. Some may like to rise above the research term "opinion
Polls" and do something more useful for science or social science.
Wiki also shows you how statistics is the slave of the expert and not vice
versa - the expert decided whether tha sample frame is really representative of
the population. We Indians are a nation of philosophers and thus perhaps it is
especially difificult to understand statistical research methods - since
philosophers do not rely on sampling and statistics to reach truth - but for
scientists this is the only way
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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