{"id":14409,"date":"2021-04-13T09:11:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T13:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/?p=14409"},"modified":"2022-08-22T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T13:35:09","slug":"rankings-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/rankings-book\/","title":{"rendered":"K Professor’s Book Earns High Rankings Abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"K
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez applauded Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies Peter Erdi when Erdi presented his Lucasse Lecture in 2019, while giving a preview of his book, Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If we compiled a list that ranks the coolest things Kalamazoo College faculty members have achieved as authors, P\u00e9ter \u00c9rdi\u2019s latest accomplishment would be on it.<\/p>\n

\u00c9rdi, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies, wrote the 2019 book Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em>. The book examines how and why humans rank certain aspects of our lives and how those rankings are viewed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to see who is stronger, richer, better and more clever,\u201d \u00c9rdi said. \u201cSince we humans love lists, are competitive and are jealous of other people, we like ranking. The book applies scientific theories to everyday experience by raising and answering such questions as \u2018Are college ranking lists objective?\u2019 \u2018How do we rank and rate countries based on their fragility, level of corruption or even happiness?\u2019 \u2018How do we find the most relevant web pages?\u2019 and \u2018How are employees ranked?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The book has already been published in German and Chinese, both with simple and complex characters. Korean and Hungarian translations are in the pipeline. In Japan, however, \u00c9rdi\u2019s book is creating the most buzz. Japanese officials have requested additional printings of the book and are negotiating the rights for an e-book.<\/p>\n

Adding to that success is that Toyo Keizai, which is a weekly magazine about the Asian economy, and three large daily Japanese newspapers \u2014 Asahi, Nikkei and Youmiuri \u2014 have published reviews. Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori notes that newspapers in Japan are extremely important to their society and it\u2019s rare for all three papers to review the same book at the same time.<\/p>\n

Youmiuri has a circulation just under 8 million, the largest in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays, accountability and transparency are emphasized, and society and companies tilt towards measurement and evaluation based on quantified index, including the use of ranking and pursuit of objectivity,\u201d the Youmiuri review says, according to Sugimori\u2019s translation. \u201cThis book touches on challenges of being objective consistently, but it does not deny the effectiveness of quantified index. The author advocates the rule of \u2018trust, but carefully,\u2019 and this is exactly the behavior pattern that is required in digital society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it may contain something stupid, rankings are convenient in their own ways,\u201d the Asahi review says. \u201cProbably, we will cope with numerical estimations even more. Therefore, the author recommends that one should change the attitude of \u2018not caring about evaluations.\u2019 Whether you like it or not, evaluations are something one needs to self-manage. This book delineates such times and people who sustain the times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nikkei review states: “True rankings need to satisfy the following three requirements: Completeness, asymmetry and transitivity. Aside from a case such as the largest lake in the world, many actual rankings do not satisfy these requirements. Subjective standards intervene. There is a room to manipulate something to get the higher rankings. It is discernment that matters in handling with abundant rankings around them. Therefore, this book focuses on the rules of social games that are called rankings. This book showcases not only theories that are based on the rankings mentioned above, but also findings and discussions from human behaviors, cognition, social psychology, politics and computational neuroscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00c9rdi has been a prolific researcher with more than 40 publications and two books published since joining Kalamazoo College. In that time, he has given more than 60 invited lectures across the world, and he received the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship<\/a>, honoring his contributions in creative work, research and publication. He also has been the editor-in-chief of Cognitive Systems Research and served as a vice president of the International Neural Network Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can like it or not, but ranking is with us,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is not a magic bullet that produces order out of chaos, but it is not the product of some random procedure. We are navigating between objectivity and subjectivity. It’s our very human nature to compare ourselves to others. The question is how to cope with the results of these comparisons. The reader will enjoy the intellectual adventure to understand our difficulties to navigate between\u00a0objective and subjective and gets help to identify and modify her place in real and virtual communities by combining human and\u00a0computational intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em> is available online through Oxford University Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If we compiled a list that ranks the coolest things Kalamazoo College faculty members have achieved as authors, P\u00e9ter \u00c9rdi\u2019s latest accomplishment would be on it. \u00c9rdi, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies, wrote the 2019 book Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play. The book examines how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":14415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[233],"tags":[39,142],"post_formats":[],"class_list":["post-14409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff","tag-faculty","tag-physics"],"yoast_head":"\r\n'Rankings' Book by K Professor Receives High Marks Abroad<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If we compiled rankings of the coolest things K faculty members have achieved as authors, P\u00e9ter \u00c9rdi\u2019s latest accomplishment would be on it.\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/rankings-book\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta 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Gonzalez applauds Professor Peter Erdi at Rankings Presentation\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12491\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez applauded Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies Peter Erdi when Erdi presented his Lucasse Lecture in 2019, while giving a preview of his book, <em>Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>If we compiled a list that ranks the coolest things Kalamazoo College faculty members have achieved as authors, P\u00e9ter \u00c9rdi\u2019s latest accomplishment would be on it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c9rdi, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies, wrote the 2019 book <em>Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em>. The book examines how and why humans rank certain aspects of our lives and how those rankings are viewed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe like to see who is stronger, richer, better and more clever,\u201d \u00c9rdi said. \u201cSince we humans love lists, are competitive and are jealous of other people, we like ranking. The book applies scientific theories to everyday experience by raising and answering such questions as \u2018Are college ranking lists objective?\u2019 \u2018How do we rank and rate countries based on their fragility, level of corruption or even happiness?\u2019 \u2018How do we find the most relevant web pages?\u2019 and \u2018How are employees ranked?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The book has already been published in German and Chinese, both with simple and complex characters. Korean and Hungarian translations are in the pipeline. In Japan, however, \u00c9rdi\u2019s book is creating the most buzz. Japanese officials have requested additional printings of the book and are negotiating the rights for an e-book.<\/p>\n<p>Adding to that success is that Toyo Keizai, which is a weekly magazine about the Asian economy, and three large daily Japanese newspapers \u2014 Asahi, Nikkei and Youmiuri \u2014 have published reviews. Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori notes that newspapers in Japan are extremely important to their society and it\u2019s rare for all three papers to review the same book at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Youmiuri has a circulation just under 8 million, the largest in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNowadays, accountability and transparency are emphasized, and society and companies tilt towards measurement and evaluation based on quantified index, including the use of ranking and pursuit of objectivity,\u201d the Youmiuri review says, according to Sugimori\u2019s translation. \u201cThis book touches on challenges of being objective consistently, but it does not deny the effectiveness of quantified index. The author advocates the rule of \u2018trust, but carefully,\u2019 and this is exactly the behavior pattern that is required in digital society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough it may contain something stupid, rankings are convenient in their own ways,\u201d the Asahi review says. \u201cProbably, we will cope with numerical estimations even more. Therefore, the author recommends that one should change the attitude of \u2018not caring about evaluations.\u2019 Whether you like it or not, evaluations are something one needs to self-manage. This book delineates such times and people who sustain the times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Nikkei review states: “True rankings need to satisfy the following three requirements: Completeness, asymmetry and transitivity. Aside from a case such as the largest lake in the world, many actual rankings do not satisfy these requirements. Subjective standards intervene. There is a room to manipulate something to get the higher rankings. It is discernment that matters in handling with abundant rankings around them. Therefore, this book focuses on the rules of social games that are called rankings. This book showcases not only theories that are based on the rankings mentioned above, but also findings and discussions from human behaviors, cognition, social psychology, politics and computational neuroscience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00c9rdi has been a prolific researcher with more than 40 publications and two books published since joining Kalamazoo College. In that time, he has given more than 60 invited lectures across the world, and he received the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/lucasse-fellowship\/\">2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship<\/a>, honoring his contributions in creative work, research and publication. He also has been the editor-in-chief of Cognitive Systems Research and served as a vice president of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ijcnn.org\/\">International Neural Network Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can like it or not, but ranking is with us,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is not a magic bullet that produces order out of chaos, but it is not the product of some random procedure. We are navigating between objectivity and subjectivity. It’s our very human nature to compare ourselves to others. The question is how to cope with the results of these comparisons. The reader will enjoy the intellectual adventure to understand our difficulties to navigate between\u00a0objective and subjective and gets help to identify and modify her place in real and virtual communities by combining human and\u00a0computational intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em> is available online through <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/ranking-9780190935467?cc=us&lang=en&\">Oxford University Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n","comment_info":"No Comments","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14409"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17573,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409\/revisions\/17573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14409"},{"taxonomy":"post_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_formats?post=14409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}