British writer

Chapter 211 Micromanipulation Master

Churchill had always disliked the Boer War.

Especially after being captured on the front line.

As for what happened next...

A young man, a reporter, brave and fearless, escaped the predicament alone,

Newspapers across the UK rushed to report on this young man's legendary story.

Of course, after returning home, Churchill began to rant over and over again in Congress, even going crazy against the Conservative Party.

He said slowly: "The two Boer Wars were the wars with the largest number of troops, the longest delay, the most cruelty and the largest expense in the British colonial history. In total, the national treasury spent at least 150 million pounds."

At the beginning of the 20th century, £150 million was an extremely terrifying figure.

The others didn't know what to say.

The carriage fell into silence.

Lu Shi opened the car curtain,

He noticed that the carriage was heading in the direction of Westminster, and asked curiously: "What else do you want to see me for?"

Wodehouse nodded.

"this."

He took out a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his coat.

Lu Shi took it,

That's a table, preliminary results of global university rankings,

Cambridge and Oxford are naturally at the front, ranked first and second respectively;

Further back, the University of Paris ranked third and the University of Munich ranked fourth;

Later came the British rule again,

University College London,

University of Edinburgh,

King's College,

…

The only good thing is that LSE is not in the top 50, and the word "fairness" has not been completely trampled into the dirt.

Lu Shi: "..."

Why does it feel like the ranking is specifically for the UK?

Is this result authoritative?

He looked at Wodehouse;

The latter laughed,

"Lu, I have to admire you. The world university rankings you have created can indeed bring unparalleled reputation to Great Britain and attract talents from all over the world. His Majesty the King has seen it and is very satisfied with the results."

Lu Shi was speechless.

"this……"

Seeing his hesitation, Wodehouse said: "I know what you are thinking. But the fact is that your disciple Solomon sent a questionnaire to international students, and they generally agreed with the results."

of course?

The UK is currently one of the centers of higher education in the world.

Another center is France,

The strange thing is that France has “only” one university——

University of Paris.

This may seem like a joke, but it's actually true.

The University of Paris is one of the oldest universities in Europe. It was founded in 1200 and was later split into thirteen schools in 1968 due to the French student revolution.

Sorbonne University, Paris Cité University, Paris University of Arts and Sciences...

They are all world-class.

This is equivalent to multiple top universities occupying one slot.

Lu Shi smiled bitterly,

"After seeing this ranking, Columbia and Harvard are afraid that they will come to settle accounts with me."

Wodehouse also fell into deep thought;

The purpose of conducting global university rankings is to improve the cultural soft power of Great Britain. If you only eat meat and don't even let others drink the soup, they will definitely not be willing to do so.

Throughout history, how many martial arts leaders have been overthrown by their younger brothers?

Wodehouse said: "What then?"

Churchill on the side smiled and said: "Do you still need to ask? Of course, this is to ensure that the ranking of British universities is relatively high before the exam, so that other countries can also have the opportunity to enter~"

This is what it says,

But how should His Majesty the King explain it?

King Edward VII is still dreaming of the dream of "all the heroes in the world are in my possession"~

"hiss……"

Wodehouse had a terrible headache.

At this time, the coachman's voice sounded: "Gentlemen, we are here."

Wodehouse went down first and arranged for the coachman to go to LSE to fetch Negati Nikolic and Tiri Solomon.

The four entered the Palace of Westminster together.

When Riku Toki and Natsume Soseki visited for the first time, they were inevitably a little curious and looked around.

The interior decoration of the Palace of Westminster is full of historical atmosphere. The towering dome is inlaid with golden decoration, which is solemn and gorgeous.

Churchill smiled and asked: "First time?"

Lu Shi nodded,

"right."

Churchill pointed to the hall in front and said: "There is the throne of St. Edward in it. Edward... hum... what a coincidence."

When Lu Shi heard this, his head was filled with black threads.

￣□￣｜｜

What's the coincidence?

There are many people named Edward among the royal family, and they have been there for seven generations.

Several people passed by the House of Lords,

Lu Shi took a curious look and found that the tables and chairs inside were very classic, and there were murals painted on the walls, depicting important events and figures in British history.

Churchill said: "If you like art, you might as well go to the 'gallery' to see it."

There is indeed a room on the south side of the palace that does not have an official name;

It is called the "Gallery" because it contains works of art such as Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" and Michelangelo's "Madonna".

Lu Shisui thought of his treasure.

"By the way, Mr. Churchill, does Britain allow private museums?"

"Ah this..."

Churchill was really asked.

He looked at Wodehouse;

Wodehouse spread his hands,

"I don't remember that there are relevant laws and regulations. Of course, no one does that in the UK. On the contrary, there are many in Spain, Italy, and France. Especially after last year's World Expo, the ones in Paris... well... Speaking of which, don't wax figures count? Considered an exhibit?”

Churchill pondered,

Whether Madame Tussauds counts as a museum is indeed a question.

As they chatted, they came to Wodehouse's office.

It seems like it has just been renovated.

A brand new Persian carpet covers the floor,

The texture of the carpet is so fine that it feels like walking on clouds when you step on it.

At the edge of the carpet, a huge fish tank stood there, but instead of fish, there were several turtles in it.

My generation: "Meow~"

Jumped happily to the fish tank.

But the fish tank was placed so high that the little guy couldn't see it, so he found a chair next to it and humped it with his big head.

The chair is made of wood. How can it be arched?

The chair legs wrinkled the floor.

Churchill laughed,

"This cat is really amazing! No wonder he became the protagonist of "I Am Cat"."

He went over and helped us move the chairs.

We immediately jumped up and looked at the turtle in the fish tank curiously.

Lu Shi was curious,

"Sir, how do you keep this?"

Wodehouse smiled and said: "I have been studying your Chinese history and culture recently. When I was reading, I found that the Chinese emperor had an imperial garden and would raise fish in the pond in the garden. So, I asked someone to get some fish from China. strip."

Lu Shi: "..."

"Where's the fish?"

Wodehouse sighed helplessly,

"You die at sea. So, I raised turtles instead."

There are too many flaws,

Lu Shi didn't know how to evaluate this magical brain circuit.

At this time,

"Meow!!!!"

Suddenly there was the sound of my hair exploding.

Looking through the sound, I saw the little guy lying on the fish tank, pulling at it crazily as if his hind legs were cramping.

The next second,

thump--

We fell into the fish tank.

It was so frightened that it was "meowing" around, but when it realized that there seemed to be no danger, it returned to its natural state and pressed down on the turtle's shell like a king cat.

The turtle moved its legs a few times, and then shrank back into its shell.

Everyone was silent.

After a while, Churchill said: "It is free."

The other three laughed wildly after hearing this.

They chatted about the content of "I Am a Cat" again. After waiting for more than an hour, the clerk's voice came from outside,

"Sir, there are two students outside, saying..."

Before he finished speaking, Wodehouse interrupted: "Let them come in."

Soon, Nikolic and Solomon entered the room.

The two young men obviously did not expect to enter the Palace of Westminster, the core of the empire, and they both seemed a little cautious and trepidatious.

Lu Shi waved,

"Sit down. Do you want us to move chairs?"

After hearing this, Solomon quickly pulled Nikolic to sit down separately.

Wodehouse said: "I asked someone to bring you a message. Do you know what I am here for?"

Solomon took out a piece of paper from his pocket,

"Teacher, please take a look."

With that said, he handed it to Lu Shi.

That is a table about the scoring criteria for university rankings.

Academic reputation: 40%;

Employer reputation: 10%;

Citations from unit faculty papers: 30%;

Teacher-student ratio: 10%;

Ratio of international teachers: 5%;

International student ratio: 5%.

Six items in total.

This was brought up by Lu Shi when he was in the United States.

After returning to China, Wodehouse handed it over to the London Political and Economics Polling Project, asking them to send telegrams to various universities for statistics, and then use weights to score the results, with a perfect score of 10.

Solomon lowered his voice,

"Teacher, we didn't cheat. That's the result in the end."

Lu Shi asked: "The first thing is academic reputation. How do you do it?"

Solomon looked at Nikolic,

The latter said: "Teacher, we have compiled the expert opinions of more than 10,000 people in the world's higher education field on the teaching and research quality of universities around the world. There is no problem."

Lu Shi asked: "Where is the United States?"

Nikolic replied: "We solicited opinions from 1,377 people, which is a lot."

Considering the current status of education in the United States, the number 1377 is indeed quite good.

Lu Shi couldn't help but mutter,

"Then why isn't there MIT?"

In modern times, MIT has dominated the list year after year.

As a result, Solomon said in confusion: "What... what science and technology? Is there a polytechnic in Massachusetts in the United States? University of Massachusetts?"

I haven't even heard of it.

Next to him, Nikolic showed an "unteachable" expression and said, "UMass and MIT are not the same school. MIT is right next to Cambridge and Harvard, but it was established very late, probably in 1861 Year."

When Lu Lu heard about this era, he remembered the development trajectory of MIT.

This school focused on applied science and engineering in the early days. After the outbreak of World War II, it relied on the research and development needs of U.S. defense technology and emerged.

MIT really has no sense of existence now.

In fact, Harvard has repeatedly asked MIT to merge with its Lawrence Academy of Sciences.

After thinking about this, Lu realized that things were very troublesome.

At the moment, Britain and France are indeed the dominant powers.

Like Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, Caltech...

These modern schools, all of which are so impressive, did not enroll more than 30 undergraduate students in 1901, so they would not be on the list at all.

Even Zurich Institute of Technology is ranked outside the top ten.

Because Einstein and von Neumann have not yet become famous, Roentgen is about to be recognized and will win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

However, Roentgen was working at the University of Munich when he won the prize.

Lu Shi had a headache.

"I've made a real mess of myself."

The others snickered,

It's rare to see Lu Shi being stumped sometimes.

After a while, Lu Shi asked: "How do you calculate the two indicators of employer reputation and unit faculty's paper citations?"

Solomon explained: "Employer reputation is easy to explain. Students have to work after graduation, and the employer's evaluation of them is the employer's reputation. As for the citations of the faculty's papers, we divide the total number of citations of the university's research papers in a year by the number of teachers in the university. derived.”

Lu Shi's eyes lit up,

"Finally, I found a loophole...ahem...I mean, the weight of citations from unit faculty members' papers should be reduced."

"Why lower it? That's the key to measuring academic impact," Nikolic asked.

Lu Shi smiled,

"First of all, can you exclude self-citations?"

"Ah this..."

Nikolic had nothing to say.

Paper citations are divided into two types: self-citations and other citations.

Generally speaking, any citation other than the author and collaborators is an citation by others.

Self-citation is the complement of other citations.

Lu Shi said: "We take Cambridge as an example to discuss, because it is easy for academics to get together and there are too many self-citations, and it is impossible to measure academic influence. Moreover, your algorithm has too high requirements for data collection, which is difficult to achieve. precise."

After all, this is not the Internet era,

There is no Internet and it relies entirely on manual statistics, which has a large error.

Nikolic was convinced;

“The proportion of citations in the papers of faculty members should indeed be reduced.”

Lu Shi nodded,

"Just reduce it by 10%."

Nikolic immediately asked: "What should we do with the extra 10%?"

Lu Shi had already thought about it,

"Among them, 5% is added to the employer's reputation; the other 5% is listed separately and is called revolutionary."

Nikolic asked: "'Revolutionary' means that academic research has made a breakthrough in a certain field and brought about earth-shaking changes in that field? Like Sir Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"?"

Lu Shi didn't speak.

On the contrary, Solomon on the side understood and whispered: "'Revolution', literally."

"ah?"

Nikolic was a little confused.

Churchill laughed,

"Students are full of energy, and of course they will hold justice and want to kick those corrupt masters off the stage of history. This 'revolutionary', in other words, is the student movement."

Nikolic: "..."

This kind of reform is a great weakening of Cambridge and Oxford, which focus on academics.

Lu Shi said: “In addition, the weight of the international teacher ratio is increased, and the weight of the international student ratio is decreased.”

Before, I still weakened Great Britain.

Now we are beginning to strengthen the United States outright.

Nikolic said: "Teacher, why don't you take your time? Let me do a rough calculation of the final result first?"

Lu Shi nodded,

"good."

Nikolic took out a pen and paper and began to calculate.

He wrote and drew for a while, and then suddenly asked: "Tiri, how many student movements took place at the University of Paris last year?"

Solomon scratched his head,

"How can I remember this? However, the French know it all. In addition, the University of Paris is already large and has recruited female students who frequently cause trouble due to the feminist movement. There must be no less than a hundred demonstrations a year."

Nikolic frowned;

"If one hundred times counts as 0.5 points, then Cambridge can only get less than 0.05 points."

He wrote for a while, and then said: "Professor Lu, according to this algorithm, Yale and Harvard should be in the top ten. Because the United States is now in a period of rapid development, the employment environment is good, and the reputation of employers is naturally preferred."

"Huh~"

Lu Shi couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

It’s enough to have two schools in the United States in the top ten.

Who would have thought,

"But Cambridge and Oxford fell down, and the University of Paris went up."

Lu Shi:! ! !

Wodehouse:! ! !

Churchill:! ! !

The three of them were stunned.

Wodehouse was the first to react and said loudly: "That won't work. The purpose of our global university rankings is not to let the French come up and enjoy the results."

Lu Shi walked to Nikolic's side,

"Show me the formula for calculating points."

Nikolic said "Oh~" and handed over the pen and paper.

Although what Lu Shi faced was just a simple weighted average, it was still one big and two big.

There is too much data!

He was mumbling to himself, writing and drawing.

Time passes minute by minute.

finally,

"alright!"

Lu Shi handed over the final form.

Everyone came together to see,

Academic reputation: 41%;