Ig-Nobel and National Competitiveness

Factory superstar
There is an event called the World Skills Competition (WSC). Starting in Spain in the 1950s, it is now a large-scale biannual competition, often dubbed as the Olympic Games for manufacturers and other skilled professions. The competition genre is broad, from robotics, metal plating, facial massage, confectionary, electronics circuits, to aroma therapy.

In the context of manufacturing and service output, occupation masters often speak of finesse and intuitive heuristics that they acquired after decades-long experience. But ‘outputs’ are not just that. They are the results of the nexus consisted of research, planning, design, development, production, and sales.

Scientists engage in the basic research, engineers in design and development, creators in innovative product planning, operators in production sites – the quality of an output is determined by the collaborative effort of these players in the same value chain.

Six dimensions of production
Can we quantitatively analyse such an output quality and potential of a nation? Much has been done by economists on this subject. But how does it look like from a natural science perspective? If we use the World Skills Competition as an index for production skills, I would choose the following indices for statistical comparison.
1. Production - Number of gold medals at the World Skills Competition
2. Design - Number of applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty
3. Development - Number of publication in natural science and engineering
4. Research - Number of Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine, economics
5. Theory - Awards in mathematics and computational sciences (Fields Medal, Nevanlinna, Abel, Schock, Wolf, Gauss, Turing, Gödel)
6. Planning - Number of awards at Ig-Nobel Prize

Part of the upper work flow at the WSC involves creative thinking as a designer. Great ideas may mature to be recognised as patents. Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) provides for the common recognition of patents that are applied and acknowledged in all the important patent jurisdictions like the US, Japan, and Britain. I use the number of PCT applications as the proxy for the design ability. Alongside the design department, there is another specialism that is responsible for development and sampling. Achievements in natural science and engineering such as new mechanisms and regulatory mechatronics will be submitted as theses to the academia. The development potential can be understood as the number of academic theses. This area is not only a monopoly of private enterprises – research institutes and universities also strive in their endeavour. One process upstream from development lies the foundation or ‘pure’ research. The most authoritative brand thereof is obviously the Nobel Prize. To value ‘research’, I count the prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology / medicine, economics, and exclude literature and peace prizes. The Nobel Prizes, however, doesn’t include mathematics – the mother of all sciences. This is due to Alfred Nobel’s philosophy that the prize shall be awarded to direct contribution to the society. Therefore I chose additional 8 prizes that are internationally admired (6 from mathematics: Fields Medal, Nevanlinna prize, Abel prize, Schock prize, Wolf prize, Gauss medal; 2 from computation sciences: Turing prize, Gödel prize). This will be the index for pure theoretical science.

The order from the WSC to mathematics is sorted according to the general production tasks. From another perspective, the later categories may seem more luxurious. When a country becomes richer and accumulates social capital, there will be more engineers who are highly trained to be able to produce scientific theses. Companies can afford to have their own foundation research institutes. Governments can spare their budget for mathematics, whose direct contribution to industries is often difficult to see. Societies are more mature and they allow research in things that don’t general immediate returns. On the same line of argument, I thought there should be another category for “useless research that are too strange to be reckoned”.

Ig-Nobel Prize, an award for aesthetic and witty planning
Ig-Nobel Prize is an unofficial award by volunteer academics, awarded at Harvard. Ig-Nobel committee chooses researches or phenomena that cannot be highly regarded by the authentic natural sciences but are uniquely indicative to the hard science. Here are some of the examples from the past recipients.
- Training a pigeon to distinguish paintings of Picasso and Monet (cognitive science)
- Tamagotchi (economics, for wasting of hundreds of work hours)
- Dog-to-human translation device (peace)
- Special steel on which pigeons wouldn’t shat (chemistry/material science)
- Karaoke (peace, for a unique way to learn tolerance)
- 34 years of dietary record for the study of brain and bodily conditions (physiology, for an attempt that nobody dared)
- Beer froth and the law of exponential decay (physics)
- Hippocampi of London cab drivers (medicine)
- Verbal indignation in organisations (literature)
Certainly, inventions of tamagotchi or doggy translator wouldn’t be in good regard by the academia, but may be pioneer products for man-machine-interface in its design philosophy. Pigeon training is a good indicator for something that is easy for humans but extremely difficult for computers, a research that may be applied to vision recognition and robot engineering. These are, in other words, children’s play that can entertain the best scientists.

This is an excellent proxy to assume the degree of creative and curious thinking in a culture. Sensitivity in this area has a strong applicability to the most upstream of the production chain – the product planning. If we define the path from the Skills Olympics to mathematics as a course of technology, Ig-Nobel is perhaps a diversion of manufacturing to an artistic pursuit.

The results
The counts were done according to the nationality of the recipients. All the mentioned awards have official websites, which show the past recipients.

The below ranking table showed the result of this exercise. Quite easily, interesting tendencies can be observed.

Type 1: The Logical Aristocrats – low on the left, higher in the centre and the right
These countries excel in theoretical and unique pursuits, but less remarkable in areas that are directly related to designing and production. They no longer want to engage in simple and operational labour, and wish to profit from ideas and softwares. Typical counties: USA, Britain, Israel, perhaps the Netherlands

Type 2: The Apathetic Middle Class – low on both ends, high in the centre
They are enthusiastic in high level authentic sciences, but relatively weak in craftsmanship. They are serious, uninterested in stupid research. Typical countries: Sweden, Germany, Russia/USSR

Type 3: The All-rounder – high from the left to the right
They value experience-based craftsmanship, and are serious on not-immediately-useful areas like math or unusual plans. At the same time, their overall level of science is also high. Typical countries: Japan, France, Canada

Type 4: The Skilled Learner – high on the left, low in the centre and the right
These countries are busy trying to improve their expertise in manufacturing and production process, but cannot yet afford to shift their attention to establishing basic research which cannot be achieved overnight. They don’t particularly like unpractical sciences. Typical countries: Korea, Taiwan, Ireland

All these types contribute to the world’s industrial development. What is remarkable is that the history of industrial take-off is relatively unrelated to the ranking. Countries such as Israel, Japan, or Canada, whose industrialisation started later as compared to Britain or France, are well represented in the table. Even before industrialisation, these countries already had strong scientific tradition, or accepted immigrants with such backgrounds, thus the subsequent industrialisation was rapid. Colonialism, however, may have a clearer impact. Type 4 nations all used to be colonies. Their masters perhaps helped them industrialise but did not encourage scientific pursuits and free thinking.

On an additional note, the European integration is an interesting process because EU member states are represented in all types. No other regions in the world have such a diverse feature in competitiveness. Industrial and education policies in the EU should reflect and nurture this competitive diversity, rather than harmonising everything.

Legend:
WSC – started in 1950, for youth between 17-22 ages in skilled professions.
PCT – unified procedure for patent applications, concluded in 1970. Now 142 contracting countries
Scientific theses – counting was done by selecting 5 most influential journals determined by Eigenfactors.org in natural science and engineering
Nobel prize – physics (1895), chemistry (1901), physiology/medicine (1901), economics (1969)
Pure science – 8 honours that are generally considered the most significant by mathematics and computer science societies. Fields medal (math, 1936, once every four years), Nevanlinna prize (math, 1982, once every four years), Abel prize (math, 2002), Schock prize (math, 1993, it also awards philosophy, visual and musical arts), Wolf prize (math, 1978), Gauss medal (math, 2002, awarded every four years), Turing prize (computer, 1966), Gödel prize (computer, 1993).
Ig-Nobel Prize – a parody of the Nobel Prizes, since 1991. For achievements in biology, chemistry, economics, literature, math, medicine, peace, physics, psychology, and public health. Archived in the Annals of Improbable Research.