How I Acquired Charisma

This chapter discusses the notion of charisma in mathematics. The word charisma colloquially means a kind of personal magnetism, often mixed with glamour. As in other academic disciplines, charisma brings power in the conventional sense: power to organize one's time, power to set the research agenda, power to attract talented students and to place them in prominent positions, as well as material perks, including the generous salary that helps distinguish a “great job” from a “good job.” Departmental rankings are broadly charisma based, so that a professor at one of the top U.S. mathematics departments will be perceived as charismatic.

Ranking Agricultural Economics Departments by AJAE Page Counts: A Reappraisal

AJAE per capita page counts provide one measure of an institution's research strength. In this article we refine Willis et al.'s measure of department size and, based on the refined measure, recompute departmental rankings for North American institutions. Results indicate that Northeastern United States departments are more widely represented among the top 20 institutions than 20 years ago and that two Canadian institutions—Guelph and British Columbia—rank in the top 12. The median AJAE publication frequency for the top 30 research institutions is about one article per research faculty member every 12 years. The AJAE page-count measure was found to be highly correlated (R2 = 0.82) with citation counts, whether narrowly or broadly defined. Thus, AJAE page counts appear to provide a simple yet valid representation of institutional research productivity.