I can still vividly remember the inaugural position of University of Malaya (UM) when the list was published in 2004 because I was in the campus. The result was very widely publicized and the celebratory banners were all over the place in the campus.
These reactions meant that the Vice Chancellor of the school, Professor Datuk Dr Hashim Yaacob, gave a lot of fucks on this ranking system. He was taking the ranking very seriously and was using it as an absolute measure of the performance of his university.
However, when the 2005 list was announced, Dr Hashim was stunned and didn't actually know how to explain the result. Since the new result was not on Dr. Hashim's side, his attitude towards to THE ranking is reversed, and he switched to the don't-give-a-fuck mode.
The answer is actually very simple, THE made a mistake in 2004.
As suggested by Education in Malaysia, we can now conclude that UM was incorrectly positioned in the 89th place last year. To have the situation studied analytically, I decided to normalize the scores given to various universities and plot them against their ranks:
THES ranking of the University of Malaya
Assuming constant populations of foreign lecturers and students, and using the scores for international faculty and international students for the year 2005, it can be extrapolated that the correct position for UM in 2004 should be at about 250, instead of 89. If this is the case, UM was actually making a significant improvement by hopping from 250 to 169, when compared with our siamese twin, NUS, whose position remained relatively unchanged (#18 in 2004 and #22 in 2005).
As for the challenge put forward by the Najib Razak, it can be inferenced from the graph that it is not difficult to rise to #50 by 2020, assuming that THE is still doing the survey, since the rate of increase in the range between 50 and 200 is linear, which is approximately 100 gains in rank per 6 percent increase in normalized score.
The real challenge for UM, as it is clear from the graph, is to move up in the top 50 region, in which the rate of increase is factorial.
1957/0118652W In the Court of the Senior Magistrate at Kuala Lumpur Civil Suit No. 138 of 1898. In the matter of the Estate of Yap Ah Loy, deceased, between Yap Hon Chin (28) Yap Loong Shin (23) Yap Leong Soon (18) Yap Kim Neo Yap Leong Sem by his next friend Ong Chi Siew Yap Leong Fong Plaintiffs and Kok Kang Keow (48), otherwise called Kok Ngeo Nga who is sued as Administratrix of the Estate and Effects of Yap Ah Loy, deceased. On the tombstone of Yap Ah Loy, we were given the following list: 1 隆興 (b. 29 December 1869, d. 5 January 1933), 2 隆盛 (Loong Shin, b. 4 April 1875, d. <1925?), 3 隆顺 (Leong Soon, b. 6 March 1880, d. 8 December 1907, died when he was only 27.8), 4 隆發 (b. 10 August 1882, d. 21 September 1900, died when he was only 18...
Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was revealed as guidance to man and clear proof of guidance, and criterion (of falsehood and truth). So when you see the new moon you should fast the whole month. Surah al-Baqarah, verse 185. English translation by Ahmed Ali (1993) Al-Quran: A comtemporary translation, Princeton University Press, Priceton. The original text reads: شَهْرُ رَمَضَانَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أُنزِلَ فِيهِ ٱلْقُرْءَانُ هُدًۭى لِّلنَّاسِ وَبَيِّنَـٰتٍۢ مِّنَ ٱلْهُدَىٰ وَٱلْفُرْقَانِ ۚ فَمَن شَهِدَ مِنكُمُ ٱلشَّهْرَ فَلْيَصُمْهُ ۖ وَمَن كَانَ مَرِيضًا أَوْ عَلَىٰ سَفَرٍۢ فَعِدَّةٌۭ مِّنْ أَيَّامٍ أُخَرَ ۗ يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ بِكُمُ ٱلْيُسْرَ وَلَا يُرِيدُ بِكُمُ ٱلْعُسْرَ وَلِتُكْمِلُوا۟ ٱلْعِدَّةَ وَلِتُكَبِّرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ مَا هَدَىٰكُمْ وَلَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ ١٨٥ The first day of the 10th month in Islamic lunar calendar, \(s\), is know as Eid al-Fitr عيد الفطر . A...
The Mandarin word for male and female are nán 男 and nǚ 女, respectively. The design of the glyph for male, nán 男, is rather simple, it is built by stacking blocks of rice field ( 田 ) and labor ( 力 , 力 is abstracted from a picture of an arm) together. Directly translation of the semantic elements gives us: Male 男: worker 力 in the field 田. image/svg+xml The motive force element can also be placed around any position in the field, e.g. on the right hand side 㽖 The Hokkien word for male and female, on the other hand, are completely different. In Hokkien, male is termed tsa-poo while female is called tsa-bóo. And the recommended glyphs by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan are 查埔 and 查某, respectively. For example 這个 旅行團的 查埔 人 比 查某 人 較少 。 We must give our attention to the glyph 查 since it could be describing a common feature found in both male and f...
從吉打 Lembah Bujang 布央谷開車回家，經過怡保的時候剛好是晚餐時間。 在麥當勞用過晚餐後，發現開車的我好像也有點睏了，於是決定在怡保睡一覺。我們把車開到 Bandar Meru Raya ，然後跟 Casuarina 要了一間房間。 隔天早我見小兒子辛円睡到很遲還不願意起床，就拿起手機給他照了一張相 1 。 原想給照片標上：阿円睡到日上三竿 2 ，大太陽曬屁股還不起身。但，住在我頭腦裡面的另外一個人問我： 三竿 到底是 : 點？ The timestamp of the photograph was 9:12:09 morning (28 May 2017). The explanation given by National Academy for Educational Research of Taiwan 台灣國家教育研究院 is：太陽已上升到 三根 竹竿相接的 高度 。表示時候不早了。This explanation suggests that ‘三' (three) is to be interpreted vertically and absolutely, instead of umbrally and relative to the physical pole. Given the fact in the phrase 三竿 (three poles) was recorded by an observatory officer, it is unlikely that the former intepretation is correct. 大太陽曬屁股還不起身嗎？ 於是我便上網查了一下該成語的出處：「日上三竿」應該是出自《 南齊書・天文誌上・日光色 》的一段話。《南齊書・天文誌》是南齊政府天文局官員根據每日的觀測日記整...
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