Hi, Karen,
If I understand this correctly, you seem to be offended because you believe that some of the jokes posted to the list were aimed at you personally or at Singapore as a nation. This is not so.
Rob poked fun at the method used to compile the rankings. He suggested that the method used to compile this ranking was so unreliable that one might just as well have bribed the journalists or bought them coffee to influence their opinions. No one suggested that you would do such a thing. This was about the rankings, not about you.
Chris responded by pointing out that the rankings are even more foolish than this. They don’t seem to recognize that they have ranked the same school twice under slightly different names. Chris’s joke responded to Rob’s comments on the methodological inadequacies of the rankings. She said nothing about you or Singapore, either.
None of these comments slight the Republic of Singapore as a nation. Singapore has achieved economic miracles linked with one of the world’s best education systems. Singapore’s design network is second to none. The use of design in Singaporean business and industry is widely respected among those who follow these issues.
The rankings cover schools, not nations. The list is narrow and parochial. The method was inadequate for getting information about the world’s best design schools. Rather than using a broad global survey or an expert panel, the magazine surveyed a self-selected list of readers from one nation. The resulting list covers the US schools where self-selected respondents graduated rather than covering all US design schools. With respect to ranking the world’s best design schools, therefore, the notions of sample size and statistical significance is silly. That’s what Rob and Chris were talking about.
After your reply, below, I reviewed the entire thread again. No one insulted you or Singapore. The list is about schools, not nations. And no one suggested that you would ever bribe a journalist. (And a cup of coffee would not be much of a bribe.)
Singapore has a strong reputation in education, industry, manufacturing, and design. No onewould bribe a journalist to write what nearly everyone already knows. The entire world recognizes what the Republic of Singapore has achieved.
Any list of well-educated people such as you find here will include many who respect and admire Singapore. I am one of them, and I’d guess the same of Chris and Rob. Rather than misinterpreting a modest joke, it would have been helpful if you had simply asked them what they meant. My guess is that they’d have been happy to explain it – and that there was no intention of insulting you or Singapore.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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I personally have little regard to anyone who is distinguished or not, if I genuinely feel offended. I simply make my point through sharp and clear. I was and am taking this joke as serious. Not the ranking, as I have written earlier that I would *laugh* at it. The ranking was the laughable part, not the remarks thereafter.
So who is the number 5, if I buy the journalists coffee? That was the the thought. Then came someone’s else’s remark they were at number 19 and 25. Not very nice, isn’t it?
For the flat response, I don’t buy anyone coffee for anything. I believe in only one thing: if you buy off someone for a deal, chances are you will not be respected. I can be small and tiny but I will never buy coffee, lunch or expensive dinner to get where I want to be or where my tiny country wants to be. To me, buying coffee to be placed at number 5 (after the list of 4 countries that I have stated) is insult to the core. And I must speak up.
This is no small joke as it implies my country needs to buy coffee to be placed after the four countries in the best design countries in the world.
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