Thursday, October 05, 2006

Hot Under the Collar

I am extremely upset about RateMyProfessors.com’s list of the Top 50 Hottest Professors. First, I didn’t make the list, and I’m the hottest damn professor I know! (With co-blogger Tom a close second, of course.) And second, the ranking system doesn’t make a bit of sense.

The professors are ranked based on the total number of student evaluators who have given them “chili peppers,” without taking into account the total students who have evaluated the professor at all. As a result, the system gives an advantage to professors who teach more classes, who teach larger classes, or who teach at colleges where students make greater use of RateMyProfessors.com. The rankings may not correlate at all to the fraction of students who actually find the professors hot.

The more sensible approach, of course, is to look at the percent of student evaluators who found a professor hot (possibly excluding professors without enough total evaluations to constitute a good sample). So I created the graph below using chili peppers as a fraction of all evaluations for the (alleged) Top 50.

Notice the absence of anything resembling a downward trend. In fact, there’s actually a slight upward trend. And a full 60% of professors on the list scored better than the professor ranked as #1 (sorry, Steve Joordens!). This is an outrage, and I hope RateMyProfessors.com will rectify it forthwith. Without accurate hotness ratings, how will prospective college students know where to enroll?

5 comments:

Schatzi572 said...

You may joke, but the funny thing is, I know a few people who have based their decisions of whose class to sign up for based on this site and the professor's hotness factor.

Glen, the good thing is you have many positive comments as well as many admirers. Plus, you have at least one chili pepper officially branding you as HOT!

If it's any consolation, here's what I'd give you: &&&&&&&

[& = chili peppers since I'm not able to use HTML tags here]

Hmmm, you're now one pepper ahead of Steve Joordens! How do you like them chilis? :)

dgm said...

you could be the brian leiter of the hotness ratings. now THAT is hawt.

but i only have chili peppers for that bell guy.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry Professor Whitman... you are very hot! Definitely one of the hottest professors I've ever had!.... opps! See you in class :-)

Anonymous said...

When I took one of your classes, a lot of the girls thought you were hot, but so did some of the guys...

Glen Whitman said...

Aww, thanks! I feel so much better now!

(Your checks are in the mail.)