tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51346533256591721972024-03-06T01:00:18.611-08:00Who's BiggerA Quantitative Guide to Historical ReputationAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730318665122179874noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-88978935292974603692015-01-23T13:27:00.000-08:002015-01-23T13:27:03.344-08:00BigThinker Talk: Video Available On-Line<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYlXXjws9kIk_P6tGlnc4inRrg8xFQpVBAI3swyaaYsHJLc4rmPzi6f5xxDpG57nOkevkFTDXrueQdxXJwlJLR4Uzglp3NV4yghgUBZUxDjr4K9C1rJQaY4S3PZrF493HyfsRw4l4M_yM/s1600/Steve_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYlXXjws9kIk_P6tGlnc4inRrg8xFQpVBAI3swyaaYsHJLc4rmPzi6f5xxDpG57nOkevkFTDXrueQdxXJwlJLR4Uzglp3NV4yghgUBZUxDjr4K9C1rJQaY4S3PZrF493HyfsRw4l4M_yM/s1600/Steve_2.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>Last week I had a very pleasant visit to Yahoo Research in Sunnyvale CA, giving a <a href="http://labs.yahoo.com/news/big-thinker-steven-skiena-ranks-historical-figures-using-computational-social-science/" target="_blank">BigThinker</a> talk about our Who's Bigger rankings. They pulled out all stops for me during my visit, although the Purple Carpet treatment was really for a delegation from Brazil. But still, I am very appreciative for their hospitality.<br />
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Yahoo has made available the video of this talk below. Particularly amusing is the reputation battle I pose between Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and rival AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. The Yahoo folk's impressive loyalty was well justified, as she crushed him in historical significance rank, by a score of 86,140 to 133,490.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="true" scrolling="no" src="https://news.yahoo.com/video/big-thinker-01-16-15-210000121.html?format=embed" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="640"></iframe>Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-59007110791362375752014-11-17T12:00:00.001-08:002014-11-17T12:00:26.501-08:00They've Put Us in The Smithsonian!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbK1uflnTrJVYaw9lXF0_w23F5PJWKU-en0LPDzA8Tk6n04H9_aSoMvZovfyRvdKN2VPxp9tTxO7gxMOJVzdKPoT6O-kiN51isDoMb-Vu40RlUF8b1sr0Ek0qu8onzTwoS7AbKBfn3C9U/s1600/SIG14_WebCover.jpg.jpeg.300x0_q85_upscale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbK1uflnTrJVYaw9lXF0_w23F5PJWKU-en0LPDzA8Tk6n04H9_aSoMvZovfyRvdKN2VPxp9tTxO7gxMOJVzdKPoT6O-kiN51isDoMb-Vu40RlUF8b1sr0Ek0qu8onzTwoS7AbKBfn3C9U/s1600/SIG14_WebCover.jpg.jpeg.300x0_q85_upscale.jpg" height="320" width="233" /></a></div>
Being put in the Smithsonian Institution is perhaps the the most prestigious destination possible for any material object. The flag that is the star-spangled banner is in the Smithsonian. The Hope Diamond is in the Smithsonian. The ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in "The Wizard of Oz" is in the Smithsonian.<br />
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Now I can proudly say that I, too, am in <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/meet-100-most-significant-americans-all-time-180953341/?preview&no-ist" target="_blank">The Smithsonian</a>.<br />
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In particular, Smithsonian magazine is running <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/meet-100-most-significant-americans-all-time-180953341/?preview&no-ist" target="_blank">a special issue on ``The 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time"</a>, with their rankings powered by our book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107041376/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1107041376&linkCode=as2&tag=smithsonianco-20&linkId=FH3RQC5LPDOQPNVS" target="_blank">Who's Bigger</a>. It was an interesting exercise to come up with these rankings, because it is a challenge to define exactly who is an American. Did they have to be born here? Live most of their life here? Die here? Become a citizen?<br />
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The editor of this special issue (Tom Frail) broke our rankings into ten different subdomains, and provided a nice capsule biography and often-surprising picture for each of the chosen people (was Ronald Reagan <i>really</i> ever that young?). It is a fun read and easy entree to the Who's Bigger universe.<br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-25988658386388647332014-11-13T09:48:00.002-08:002014-11-13T09:48:49.570-08:00Avery Fisher and his HallToday's news has an interesting story about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/arts/music/lincoln-center-to-rename-avery-fisher-hall.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news" target="_blank">how the family of businessman / donor Avery Fisher reached a settlement with the management of Lincoln Center to take his name off of the New York Philharmonic's Avery Fisher Hall</a> to free it up for a new, presumably much larger donor.<br />
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This story resonates with me for two reasons. First, attaching your name to an important building is an excellent way to retain historical significance. Our rankings puts Avery Fisher at 199,082, meaning he ranks among the top quarter of Wikipedia figures. The company where he made his money (Fisher Radio) has long since been absorbed, and his name is no longer that of an active brand. Giving up his name on the building will condemn his fame to decline with time consistently with other mortals.<br />
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Avery Fisher in important to me because my father Morris Skiena worked for him as a radio repairman early on, at a time when Fisher had only three employees. Indeed in this <a href="http://www.fisherconsoles.com/fortune%20oct%201946%20hifi%20article.pdf" target="_blank">1946 Fortune Magazine article about Fisher</a>, my father is the guy at the bench with his back to you on the lower left of page 161.<br />
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My father knew the future was television, not radio. So, by employing the business sense that Skienas are famous for, Dad left the company before Fisher hit it big to become a television repairman. I get reminded of this story every time I pass Avery Fisher Hall. I still call other city landmarks by their old, honest names: the PanAm Building, the Triborough Bridge, and the RCA building in Rockefeller Center, so I suspect it will always be Avery Fisher Hall to be regardless of which swell ultimately coughs up the dough to choose its name.<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-89454104478386700592014-09-18T10:48:00.001-07:002014-09-18T10:48:13.634-07:00I was a Rebel at the Wisest Place on Earth<br />
On Labor Day I gave my Who's Bigger talk to students and faculty at the University of Virginia College in Wise, Virginia as part of their `<a href="http://www.wise.virginia.edu/News/Skiena-lecture-Sept-1" target="_blank">`Digitial Rebel'' series</a>. Thanks to Daniel Ray and the rest of their faculty for very gracious hosting. It was an interesting experience, and from their questions I can safely assert that I never spoke to a Wiser audience.<br />
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This visit was particularly meaningful to me because I received my undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, which serves as the mother ship to Wise. It was nice to see connections in the names of the sport teams (the Cavaliers), the school logo (a representation of <i><a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Thomas_Jefferson" target="_blank">Thomas Jefferson [10]</a>'</i>s Rotunda building at UVa, and even an architectural remnant left after the 1895 Rotunda fire.<br />
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Wise is a small town is in the Appalachian Mountains not far from the corner where Virginia meets Tennessee and Kentucky. Life there appears quite different than living in Manhattan, but has its own advantages. Driving around town, I noticed a sign proclaiming actor <i><a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/George_C._Scott" target="_blank">George C. Scott [12170]</a></i> as a local product. Our rankings mark him as the biggest of the Wise men.Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-34920687861016963062014-07-28T17:59:00.000-07:002014-07-28T17:59:23.314-07:00Star Sighting: Who's Bigger at Cafe Boulud?My wife and I took advantage of a beautiful New York evening with kids away at camp to dine tonight al fresco at Cafe Boulud, one of the nicest restaurants in the city. We tried to take advantage of Restaurant Week prices to learn they apply only to lunch, but that is not the story I am trying to tell.<br />
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As we finished our entree, we were surprised to see television talk show host <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Charlie_Rose" target="_blank">Charlie Rose</a> sit down at the table next to us. And then at the next table sat down <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/William_Goldman" target="_blank">William Goldman</a>, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of <i>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid</i>, and countless other prominent films. They chatted together like old friends, as perhaps they are.<br />
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This kind of thing doesn't happen to us much, but I couldn't help wondering: <i>Who's Bigger?</i> Through the miracle of cell phone technology I looked it up. They are amazingly similar. Our algorithms rank Charlie Rose at 13,760, a bit ahead of William Goldman at 15,213.<br />
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I would like to report that I told them their rankings, which they found fascinating, and that I am now booked to appear on the next Charlie Rose Show. The truth is, I behaved like a proper New Yorker and let them eat.<br />
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I guess I am better at network algorithms like PageRank than networking. At least I hope so.<br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-51055248307129586562014-07-28T11:00:00.000-07:002014-07-28T11:00:51.341-07:00The Biggest Americans (The Atlantic)Identifying the most historically significant figures in American History is a natural question for our analysis methods. Indeed, our rankings will be used to fuel a special issue of <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/" target="_blank">The Smithsonian</a> magazine this fall on the top figures in American history. Look for details to come in a future post.<br />
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But here we react to a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/12/they-made-america/305385/" target="_blank">special issue on the 100 most influential figures in American history</a> under the aegis of Ross Douthat, which appeared in the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/" target="_blank">The Atlantic Monthly</a> in December 2006. Their methodology was based a historian poll, where rankings from ten historians were combined into a single consensus ranking. This inspires the obvious question of how our top 100 Americans compare to the Atlantic's choices.<br />
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To proceed, one must move past the definitional issues of who qualifies as American. Is an explorer like Columbus American? A naturalized citizen like Albert Einstein? Someone born in the U.S. who established themselves elsewhere, like the poet T.S. Eliot? Our opinions on these matters are, respectively no, yes, and no, to be broadly consistent with the Atlantic.<br />
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How did the historians do? Pretty well, since there is great overlap between our rankings and theirs. Fully fifty of <i>The Atlantic</i>'s top 100 rank in our top 100, with another twenty listed in our second hundred candidates. Our top three figures are exactly their top three figures (Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson), in the same order. The rank correlation between the orders we rank their top 100 is 0.654, demonstrated by the dot plot below:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7otc4A-IkI2N1vRNzFTMJcrLBXD2yVmOy_O6ySb-e56lCj6-POPLcA9eqPxaSHsrjDS6vbKUN7Rje9hmlGeEeDjHpOimGcvp8yh3HwAmu5i6wTYIriyehVBUa-K7B84Q0RIHYfGl8l5U/s1600/atlantic_dotplot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7otc4A-IkI2N1vRNzFTMJcrLBXD2yVmOy_O6ySb-e56lCj6-POPLcA9eqPxaSHsrjDS6vbKUN7Rje9hmlGeEeDjHpOimGcvp8yh3HwAmu5i6wTYIriyehVBUa-K7B84Q0RIHYfGl8l5U/s1600/atlantic_dotplot.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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Perhaps the most important difference between our two rankings is how we deal with the Presidents of the United States. Our rankings put 41 of the 43 men to serve as president in our 100 most significant historical figures (our apologies to Jimmy Carter and Chester Alan Arthur, who just got nosed out). By contrast, only 17 presidents made the Atlantic's top 100 Americans.<br />
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We think this reflects a clear editorial judgement on their part: it seems less interesting for readers when half your list is stuffed with presidents. Ten of their top 20 Americans were presidents, yet only two of the men ranked 51 to 100 (including Richard Nixon sitting provocatively at 99). One can hear the summons for diversity and controversy (Ralph Nader?) affecting the historian's better judgement. My guess is that the historians were confronted with a pre-selected group of figures, who they generally ordered in a sensible manner.<br />
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Here are the ten Atlantic figures with the weakest Who's Bigger rankings. Three are journalist/media figures (Gallup, Bennett, and Lippmann), while three others are scientists (Salk, Watson, and Mead):<br />
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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 511px;">
<!--StartFragment-->
<colgroup><col width="163"></col>
<col span="4" width="87"></col>
</colgroup><tbody>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15" width="163">Name</td>
<td width="87">Atlantic Ranking</td>
<td width="87">WB Ranking</td>
<td width="87">Norm A Rank</td>
<td width="87">Norm WB Rank</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">George_Gallup</td>
<td align="right" x:num="83.0">83</td>
<td align="right" x:num="29736.0">29736</td>
<td align="right" x:num="82.0">82</td>
<td align="right" x:num="100.0">100</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">James_Gordon_Bennett,_Sr.</td>
<td align="right" x:num="69.0">69</td>
<td align="right" x:num="19473.0">19473</td>
<td align="right" x:num="68.0">68</td>
<td align="right" x:num="99.0">99</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Benjamin_Spock</td>
<td align="right" x:num="88.0">88</td>
<td align="right" x:num="8638.0">8638</td>
<td align="right" x:num="87.0">87</td>
<td align="right" x:num="98.0">98</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Walter_Lippmann</td>
<td align="right" x:num="90.0">90</td>
<td align="right" x:num="5854.0">5854</td>
<td align="right" x:num="89.0">89</td>
<td align="right" x:num="97.0">97</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Betty_Friedan</td>
<td align="right" x:num="78.0">78</td>
<td align="right" x:num="5553.0">5553</td>
<td align="right" x:num="77.0">77</td>
<td align="right" x:num="96.0">96</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Lyman_Beecher</td>
<td align="right" x:num="92.0">92</td>
<td align="right" x:num="5203.0">5203</td>
<td align="right" x:num="91.0">91</td>
<td align="right" x:num="95.0">95</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Sam_Walton</td>
<td align="right" x:num="73.0">73</td>
<td align="right" x:num="4923.0">4923</td>
<td align="right" x:num="72.0">72</td>
<td align="right" x:num="94.0">94</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Jonas_Salk</td>
<td align="right" x:num="34.0">34</td>
<td align="right" x:num="3775.0">3775</td>
<td align="right" x:num="33.0">33</td>
<td align="right" x:num="93.0">93</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">James_D._Watson</td>
<td align="right" x:num="68.0">68</td>
<td align="right" x:num="3619.0">3619</td>
<td align="right" x:num="67.0">67</td>
<td align="right" x:num="92.0">92</td>
</tr>
<tr height="15">
<td height="15">Margaret_Mead</td>
<td align="right" x:num="82.0">82</td>
<td align="right" x:num="3025.0">3025</td>
<td align="right" x:num="81.0">81</td>
<td align="right" x:num="91.0">91</td>
</tr>
<!--EndFragment-->
</tbody></table>
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By contrast, here are the ten highest ranking Americans missing from the Atlantic:<br />
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Name WB<br />
Ranking<br />
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George_W._Bush 36 (our algorithm's most-regretted ranking)<br />
Edgar_Allan_Poe 54<br />
John_F._Kennedy 71<br />
Nikola_Tesla 93<br />
Grover_Cleveland 98<br />
Andrew_Johnson 105<br />
Barack_Obama 111 (admittedly, elected after the Atlantic article)<br />
Bill_Clinton 115<br />
Madonna 121<br />
Bob_Dylan 130<br />
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These might not personally all be my choices for the ten most historically-significant missing Americans. But I have no doubt that I would put our team ahead of the Atlantic's in any game of <i>Who's Bigger</i>.<br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-58317975522135017772014-04-23T09:22:00.000-07:002014-04-23T09:22:12.072-07:00Re-ranking the PantheonAt the suggestion of Cesar Hidalgo, the leader of the Pantheon project, we repeated <a href="http://whosbigger.blogspot.com/2014/04/ranking-pantheon.html" target="_blank">our previous analysis</a> restricted to the top 1000 people in the Pantheon rankings. This better captures the people their rankings think are important, so differences in our relative rankings become more meaningful.<br />
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First we look at the people from this pool who our methods rank higher than Pantheon. By definition, all of these people will be highly regarded by both of our rankings. It is clear that we favor American and British leaders higher than they do, because we analyze only the English Wikipedia :<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">860 907 47 Woodrow Wilson U.S. President </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">841 996 155 Edward I of England British King</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">776 961 185 Leonhard Euler Mathematician</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">674 697 23 Theodore Roosevelt U.S. President</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">634 799 165 John Milton British Poet/Philosopher</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">600 985 385 Alexander II of Russia Russian Czar</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">583 789 206 Edward VI of England British King</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">556 666 110 Dwight D. Eisenhower U.S. President</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">553 970 417 John Dewey American Educator</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">550 954 404 Alexander I of Russia Russian Czar</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">542 636 94 Harry S. Truman U.S. President </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">539 654 115 Bill Clinton U.S. President</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">538 889 351 Francis I of France French King</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">536 936 400 Soren Kierkegaard Danish Philosopher </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">530 563 33 Charles Dickens British Writer</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">524 594 70 William the Conqueror British King</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">509 815 306 Jacques Cartier French explorer of America</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">505 742 237 Henry IV of France French King</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">503 677 174 Geoffrey Chaucer British Writer</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">498 616 118 Lewis Carroll British Writer</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">495 762 267 Alfred the Great British King</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">486 962 476 Eleanor of Aquitaine French/British Queen Consort</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">446 809 363 George H. W. Bush U.S. President</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">442 983 541 Archduke Franz Ferdinand Proximate cause of WWI</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">441 900 459 John Wayne U.S. actor and "Duke"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">439 545 106 Alexander Graham Bell Inventor of the telephone</span><br />
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<div>
Still, these are figures who are generally quite familiar to me: I've heard of all of them, although I would not be confident in my ability to tell one Alexander from the other. By contrast, there are several figures among the ones they rank much higher than we do who I could not place, or place as celebrities more than historical figures:</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-7960 673 8633 Justin Bieber Teenaged popular singer</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8008 943 8951 Haruki Murakami Japanese novelist</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8460 850 9310 Carus Short-ruling Roman Emperor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8463 765 9228 Antisthenes Greek Philosopher</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8601 880 9481 Jenna Jameson American porn star</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8630 734 9364 Anacreon Greek Poet</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8746 363 9109 Anaximenes of Miletus Greek Philosopher</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8836 352 9188 James son of Alphaeus One of Jesus' twelve apolstles</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-8932 919 9851 Polykleitos Greek sculptor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-9008 934 9942 Lysippos Greek sculptor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-9674 851 10525 Carinus Roman Emperor with Carus (above)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-9866 671 10537 Hor-Aha Egyptian Pharaoh</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-10628 920 11548 Kaka Brazilian soccer player</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-10696 775 11471 Orhan Pamuk Turkish novelist</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-11153 839 11992 Abu Nuwas Classical Arabic poet</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-11722 906 12628 Trebonianus Gallus Short-ruling Roman Emperor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-11771 560 12331 Praxiteles Greek sculptor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-11834 368 12202 Vitellius Very short-ruling Roman Emperor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-13291 607 13898 Gaius Maecenas Roman political advisor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-14507 701 15208 Milan Kundera Contemporary Czech novelist</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-14571 843 15414 Emir Kusturica Bosnian filmmaker</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-16783 610 17393 Paulo Coelho Brazilian novelist</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-19060 820 19880 Monica Bellucci Italian actress and model</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-21652 737 22389 Francois Villon French poet of the Middle Ages</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">-22604 974 23578 Pedro Almodovar Spanish Film director</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-22754 935 23689 Quintillus Short-lived Roman Emperor</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-26427 963 27390 Jean Reno French actor</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
This roster makes clear the differences in our models for aging historical reputations. About half of these historically-overvalued people are relatively minor figures from ancient times: short-lived Emperors and second-tier philosophers/poets/artists. Many of the rest are contemporary celebrities who don't really belong in anyone's top thousand historical figures, like porn star Jenna Jameson.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are also a few international artists of real stature (including Orhan Pamuk, Milan Kundera, and Pedro Almodvar) who might be undervalued by the English Wikipedia relative to international editions. Still, I think our rankings place them in the right order of magnitude.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-70982980651780677132014-04-16T08:00:00.003-07:002014-04-16T08:00:49.450-07:00Ranking the PantheonA <a href="http://whosbigger.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-pantheon.html" target="_blank">previous post</a> described the MIT Pantheon, another project which used Wikipedia data to rank historical figures. We (meaning Charles, of course) extracted their rankings and matched them to our historical significance rankings, so we could compare them. There is some subtlety in algorithmic name matching, such as determining whether our "Jesus" is the same person as their "Jesus Christ", but we succeeded in matching 10,116 of the Pantheon names to our Who's Bigger rankings. This is roughly 90% of the total, providing a reasonable basis for comparison.<br />
<br />
First off: it is clear that there is substantial agreement among our placement of historical figures, with a Spearman rank correlation of 0.65 between us and them. Both sets of rankings incorporate aging as part of the methodology, so much of this agreement rests on our preferences for the tried and true. The Who's Bigger rankings of these figures have a rank correlation of 0.58 with year-of-birth (older historical figures being more highly ranked), while the comparable number is 0.53 with Pantheon.<br />
<br />
More revealing is to look at the extremes: the figures whom we assign very different ranks from them. In particular, we computed the difference between our ranks (Pantheon - us) and present the figures with the largest and smallest differences. This is not a perfect statistic, since Pantheon ranks less than 12,000 people while our numbers go well above 800,000. But it is revealing none the less.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Diff Panrank BigRank Name Who's Dat?</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">10120 10521 401 'John Marshall' Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">10058 11184 1126 'Donald Bradman' Great Cricket champion</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">10027 10823 796 'William H. Seward' U.S. Secretary of State (bought Alaska)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9963 11077 1114 'Gough Whitlam' Australian Prime Minister</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9933 10812 879 'John Churchill 1st Duke of Marlborough' English Statesman</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9915 10802 887 'George Washington Carver' African-American Inventor</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9886 10405 519 'Tipu Sultan' Ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9735 10146 411 'John Jay' Early U.S. Statesman</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9536 9935 399 'John C. Calhoun' U.S. Senator /VP (nullification)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9454 9886 432 'Susan B. Anthony' U.S. Suffragist (women's right to vote)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9439 11243 1804 'Alexander Mackenzie' Second Prime Minister of Canada</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9243 10064 821 'Abigail Adams' Wife of President John Adams</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9215 10729 1514 'Robert Menzies' Longest serving Australian Prime Min.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9207 10917 1710 'Robert Byrd' Long-serving U.S. Senator</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9175 10406 1231 'Sojourner Truth' African-American abolitionist</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9171 10562 1391 'Lucille Ball' TV Comedian (I Love Lucy)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9171 9330 159 'John A. Macdonald' First Prime Minister of Canada</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9165 10466 1301 'Edmund Barton' First Prime Minister of Australia</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9130 10318 1188 'Mary Todd Lincoln' Wife of President Abraham Lincoln</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">9008 10086 1078 'Svetlana Kuznetsova' Russian tennis star</span><br />
<br />
<div>
Almost all of these figures are from the English-speaking world: United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain. It is no surprise that our methods (which only analyze the English language Wikipedia) generally rank these people higher than Pantheon (which analyzes editions from all languages). I personally recognize 14 of the twenty names here, and think they are generally quite Big, although I cringe a bit where some of our rankings are clearly too high (particularly Sultan and Kuznetsova).<br />
<br />
The major American figures here are generally from the 19th century, which makes sense given the difference between our aging model and the one employed in Pantheon (full disclosure: Pantheon has recently changed its rankings, and what we have here may not be their current rankings). In particular, our rankings have fully discounted a historical figure 160 years after birth, while they continued historical discounting arbitrarily far into the past). Thus 19th century figures have generally achieved steady state by our analysis, so we value them relatively higher than Pantheon would.<br />
<br />
The other side of the coin are the people who Pantheon ranks very much higher than we do. The figures below all ranked in the bottom half of Wikipedia figures by our analysis, yet were identified by Pantheon among the 12,000 most interesting figures for analysis:</div>
<div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Diff Panrank BigRank Name Who's Dat?</span></b></div>
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-472241 8052 480293 'Alexandra Stan' Romanian singer and model</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-484757 11086 495843 'Serge Haroche' French Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 2012</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-493874 9471 503345 'Lola Pagnani' Italian actress</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-495688 11148 506836 'Stephane Lannoy' French soccer referee</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-497360 10133 507493 'Olivier Giroud' French soccer player</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-517354 11160 528514 'Wouter Weylandt' Belgian professional cyclist killed in 2011</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-525449 9576 535025 'Nathalia Dill' Brazilian television actress</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-525475 10601 536076 'Milos Zeman' Current president of the Czech Republic</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-525633 11232 536865 'David J. Wineland' Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 2012</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-526148 10774 536922 'Gianluca Ramazzotti' Italian singer-songwriter</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-555909 11029 566938 'Linda Maria Baros' Contemporary French poet</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-558970 10942 569912 'Jules A. Hoffmann' French Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, 2011</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-573789 11144 584933 'Pastora Soler' Spanish Eurovision singer</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-581161 11286 592447 'Sun Yang' Chinese Olympic swimmer</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-601660 10310 611970 'Kevin Grobkreutz' German soccer player</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-607491 11318 618809 'Missy Franklin' American Olympic Swimmer, 2012</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-613223 11278 624501 'Brian Kobilka' American Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, 2011</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-632278 11224 643502 'Lobsang Sangay' Prime minister in exile for Tibet</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-685152 10556 695708 'Bernice Bejo' French-Argentine actress</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-689256 11296 700552 'Vaclav Pilar' Czech soccer player</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-693543 9577 703120 'Raphael Varane' French soccer player</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-717448 11231 728679 'Ludmilla Radchenko' Russian model and active </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-751460 10907 762367 'Anton Lamazares' Contemporary Spanish painter</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">-803441 11270 814711 'Petr Jiracek' Czech soccer player</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
These people are generally Europeans, who have the easiest time rising to the Pantheon Wikipedia language threshold. They are also all very contemporary figures, many of who achieved their greatest renown for achievements occurring after the Wikipedia edition we analyzed in our rankings (October 11, 2010), so presumably they would be ranked somewhat higher if we reran our analysis today.<br />
<br />
However, I personally only recognized one name here, and it required some prompting. Bernice Bejo was the lead actress in "The Artist" which, by the way, was a wonderful picture. These people would generally not be in my 12,000 most significant (or famous) historical figures, but Pantheon's objectives are somewhat different than ours. My guess is the both groups are content with our ranking differences given our different motivations.<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
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Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-25126509054555920622014-04-07T06:21:00.000-07:002014-04-07T06:21:41.081-07:00Big Data Done Wrong?<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/opinion/eight-no-nine-problems-with-big-data.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0" target="_blank">An Op-Ed piece in today's <i>New York Times</i></a> by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis present <i>Who's Bigger</i> as the seventh of eight (or nine) problems with Big Data, specifically "giving scientific-sounding solutions to hopelessly imprecise questions". They acknowledge that we get many things right, but complain about "egregious errors".<br />
<br />
But guys: given a 379 page book with thousands of rankings to pick from, your killer example is that we ranked Francis Scott Key at position 19 on the poets list? If they don't have a complaint until position 19 on one of several dozens of tables in our book, well, we must be doing pretty darn good.<br />
<br />
But their chosen example is illuminating, because it gets to the heart of what our rankings are and are not designed to do. Our book carefully claims to measure "historical significance" or "meme strength", not "importance" as they insist on misrepresenting in the article.<br />
<br />
So how historically durable will the Francis Scott Key meme be, say 100 years from now? If there is still a United States stuck with the same national anthem (I'd take that bet), then we can be pretty certain the Marcus and Davis great-great-great-grandchildren will learn Key's words and the story behind his work.<br />
<br />
"Oh say can you see?" Only if you are willing to look at what data is actually trying to tell you.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-68600977864739201972014-03-20T11:20:00.002-07:002014-03-20T11:20:42.483-07:00Time Magazine's College RankingsTime Magazine has launched an <a href="http://time.com/27821/us-college-rankings/?SA=48&SB=79#interactive" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">interactive feature</a> ranking colleges by the prominence of the Wikipedia pages of their living graduates. Harvard appears to be the top dog by this measure, just edging past Stony Brook (which again failed to make its way into the NCAA basketball tournament, the event which inspired Time's feature):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQbYGZslOxbVc41GkURCLIYgMrvYPriDY9FdoJYleFuDKtvN71vg8GpBcWONS7qspYLCybWtxzJdT6xVmM3UV8j7pbeafVdd_eY2gRK4zNoem0Lr9XVQ2YZIwhzA7FhU7Jsgv4Q90vTU/s1600/sb-harvard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQbYGZslOxbVc41GkURCLIYgMrvYPriDY9FdoJYleFuDKtvN71vg8GpBcWONS7qspYLCybWtxzJdT6xVmM3UV8j7pbeafVdd_eY2gRK4zNoem0Lr9XVQ2YZIwhzA7FhU7Jsgv4Q90vTU/s1600/sb-harvard.jpg" height="468" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Their ranking methodology includes certain Wikipedia variables analogous to what we have used, including length and links in/out of the page -- which serves as a poor man's version of PageRank. But PageRank is much better for meaningful notions of importance: links into a page only matter if they are from prominent individuals, and links out have little obvious meaning except that it should be correlated strongly with article length.<br />
<br />
The other aspect of such an analysis is properly attributing alumni to schools. The Wikipedia categories give fairly unreliable annotations, although after checking I can confirm that Pat Benatar in fact did attend Stony Brook for a year before dropping out. I guess we "hit her with our best shot".<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-41517284736918786742014-03-18T09:06:00.002-07:002014-03-18T09:06:54.816-07:00The Pantheon<br />
I was reading my Sunday New York Times when my heart skipped a beat. There in the magazine was an article `<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/whos-more-famous-than-jesus.html?hpw&rref=magazine" target="_blank">`Who's More Famous than Jesus?''</a> which had to, just had to, be about our <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/" target="_blank">Who's Bigger</a> rankings.<br />
<br />
Well, it wasn't. A project at MIT called <a href="http://pantheon.media.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Pantheon</a> was the source of the article. Pantheon also uses analysis of Wikipedia data to rank the fame of historical figures. I will confess to a little sense of Schadenfreude in reading the comments complaining about theie rankings, including:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Their bias towards Americans in particular and the Western world in general.</li>
<li>That they contain too few women in highly ranked places</li>
<li>Gleefully pointing out occasional mechanical misclassifications of individuals (particularly problematic was identifying John Wayne Gacy as a comedian instead of a serial killer)</li>
<li>Making too big a deal of small differences between rankings of closely matched people</li>
<li>Complaining that Wikipedia is not a reliable source to analyze world culture.</li>
</ul>
<div>
This all sounded very familiar, because these comments have been made about our rankings as well.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It seems worthwhile to compare our rankings and methodology with that underlying Pantheon. There are several differences between our approaches to using Wikipedia as a resource:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b><i>Languages</i></b> -- Pantheon makes use of the multiplicity of Wikipedia language editions in its analysis. To be ranked as truly famous one must appear in at least 25 different language editions. This would make the rankings more inclusive of world opinion than our English-only analysis, although reader comments still complain about the Anglo-centric bias of the results.</li>
<li><i><b>Variables</b></i> -- Of the Wikipedia variables we employ in our rankings (two forms of PageRank, hits, edits, and article lengths), Pantheon only employs page hits. Thus their notion of Fame is more akin to our notion of Celebrity (which loads heavily on hits). Gravitas is the other component of historical significance, which we found loading most heavily on PageRank. Thus we would expect their rankings to over-emphasize popular culture ahead of ours.</li>
<li><b><i>Corrections for Time</i></b> -- Pantheon employs an exponential decay model of fame in an attempt to correct for the recency bias of fame. This overcompensates for the passage of time: six of the Pantheon top ten were ancient Greeks, with three others (Jesus, Confucius, and Julius Caesar) living 2,000 or more years ago. The most recent member of the Pantheon top ten only gets us to the Renaissance (Leonardo da Vinci). Our aging model is more sophisticated, and calibrated to appearances of names in 200 years of scanned books / Google Ngrams.</li>
<li><b><i>Validation</i></b> -- Their website includes an analysis of how their rankings compare to performance in three sports domains: Formula 1 racing, tennis, and swimming. Our book discusses how our rankings compare to sports statistics (particularly with respect to baseball), but we also perform a more general set of validation tests, including correlations against 35 published rankings, prices of collectables including paintings and autographs, and public opinion polls.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
To their credit, their website is fun to play with and features a host of interesting visualizations.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But how good are the rankings? It is easy to cherry-pick any set of rankings for things that look weird. They name Rasmus Lerdorf (developer of the programming language PhP, who frankly I had never heard of) among their top 11,000 people, on the strength of being in more than 25 Wikipedia editions (he is actually in 31). By comparison, we have him as the 51,670th most significant figure. They rank Justin Bieber at 671 to our 8633, and Johnny Depp at 203 to our 2739, suggesting an over-emphasis of celebrity at the expense of gravitas.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the right way to compare rankings is through validation measures. This takes work, but I hope we can do such a study soon. We will report our results here when we do.</div>
<div>
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<div>
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-68887824650519399682014-02-15T14:41:00.000-08:002014-02-15T14:41:22.463-08:00First Ladies: Siena rank vs. Skiena rank?As part of a collaboration with C-SPAN, Siena Research Institute has just presented the results of its <a href="http://www.siena.edu/sri/firstladies" target="_blank">latest historian poll ranking the top American First Ladies</a>, i.e. the wives of the presidents. They have conducted five such rankings over the past 31 years, through a process of asking experts where they rank in such categories as <i>Background</i>, <i>Value to the Country</i>, <i>Leadership</i>, <i>Being her own Woman</i>, <i>Accomplishments</i>, and <i>Courage</i>.<br />
<br />
We constructed our own rankings of First Ladies in <i>Who's Bigger, </i>through Wikipedia analysis, so it is an interesting exercise to compare our rankings. Bottom line -- we come off quite well.<br />
<br />
We agree with the poll's selection of <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Eleanor_Roosevelt" target="_blank">Eleanor Roosevelt</a> as the top first lady. In fact, six of our top ten appear among the top ten in the Siena Poll. All of our top ten rank in the top half of the 38 first ladies ranked by Siena, except for one. We regard Mary Todd Lincoln as the fifth most significant first lady, where they rank her as the 30th best. There is no contradiction here: the meme associated with Mary Todd Lincoln is of a needy, crazy woman tormenting her husband when he really had other things to deal with. She was indeed historically significant, but not in a favorable sense.<br />
<br />
Our ranking of the ten least significant First Ladies included three Siena didn't bother to rank. Chester Arthur and Martin Van Buren were widowers when they entered the White House, so it questionable whether we should have considered their spouses at all. William Henry Harrison died after a month in office, barely leaving his wife with time to unpack. Our remaining seven slots are filled with four from Siena's bottom ten (the wives of Taylor, Pierce, Fillmore, and McKinley), with the remaining three all ranking in the bottom half of the Siena poll.<br />
<br />
These results demonstrate the ability of our ranking methods to tease apart significance even of relatively minor historical figures (the average first lady ranks in the neighborhood of 15-20,000 or so). My suspicion is that Wikipedia-based rankings does particularly well at this task because the expert panelists probably snuck peaks at the encyclopedia to help answer the poll! I expect very few historians could keep straight the accomplishments of all the first ladies without a refresher.Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-75019801024737098512014-01-21T19:29:00.002-08:002014-01-21T19:29:51.844-08:00A Moment of Wikipedia Glory!Charles and I were surprised and flattered to discover that <i>Who's Bigger</i> has officially been granted its very own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who's_Bigger:_Where_Historical_Figures_Really_Rank" target="_blank">Wikipedia page</a>, in English. By repeating our computational analysis in the future, we will now be able to rigorously determine whether we are bigger than, say, the Bible. OK, maybe this is somewhat aspirational, but as the first of my five books to earn its own Wikipedia page <i>Who's Bigger</i> already becomes my biggest book by default.<br />
<br />
The coolest thing is that for eight hours starting <i style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"><b>08:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC) </b></i>our book held pride of place under <i style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"><b>Did you know? </b></i>on the front page of Wikipedia! Such placement matters. Statistics show that our page has been accessed 7596 times over the past thirty days, exactly 5144 of which came on January 21.<br />
<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-25444467085803213302014-01-16T15:48:00.002-08:002014-01-16T15:49:34.027-08:00Professor, R.I.P.What one is exposed to as a youth can have a tremendous impact on future life paths. I have spent my full working life as a college professor, but did not come from an academic family. During my youth, there was only one professor I was really aware of, and his model no doubt influenced my choice of career in ways that I am not fully aware of.<br />
<br />
I feel moved to acknowledge the influence of <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Russell_Johnson" target="_blank">Russell Johnson</a>, the Professor on the TV show ``Gilligan's Island'', who passed away today. He never seemed constrained by disciplinary boundaries; a generalist with deep knowledge of every subject, and a flair for creating high technology items out of coconut shells. His model of the nerdy academic wandering his tropical island paradise was so compelling that maybe it helped turn me into a nerdy academic wandering my not-so-tropical, Long Island not-so-paradise...<br />
<br />
This seems an appropriate opportunity to rank the seven stars of Gilligan's Island by their historical significance:<br />
<ul>
<li>Jim Backus (Mr. Howell) 15,374.</li>
<li>Alan Hale, Jr. (The Captain) 23,841.</li>
<li>Bob Denver (Gilligan) 26,025.</li>
<li>Tina Louise (Ginger) 28,365.</li>
<li>Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) 35,815.</li>
<li>Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell) 43,321.</li>
<li>Russell Johnson (The Professor) 48,384.</li>
</ul>
<div>
These actor rankings grossly reflect my sense of reality. Jim Backus was a genuine movie star (remember him as the father in ``Rebel without a Cause''?) who achieved his greatest cultural role as the voice of Mr. Magoo. I would have ranked Bob Denver ahead of Alan Hale, but the captain appeared in several movies prior to his role on the show. None of the four supporting actors ever had any really significant roles outside the show, a typecasting fate which seemed to strike many of the television actors of the era.</div>
Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-21390400374381024832014-01-02T11:33:00.000-08:002014-01-02T11:33:10.482-08:00Putting "Who's Bigger" in its Proper PlaceNot all reviewers of our book "<i>Who's Bigger</i>" have been fully appreciative of our work. Don't worry: we will look at these in a future blog post.<br />
<br />
But the most effective job of putting "<i>Who's Bigger</i>" into proper perspective was done by one Abby Skiena, age 10, the daughter of mine to whom the book was dedicated to.<br />
<br />
On the official publication date I presented both of my children with signed copies of the book for them to forever treasure. Abby was excited enough to bring hers to school the next day for show and tell. <br />
<br />
"Abby, did your classmates think the book was cool?," I asked when I got home.<br />
<br />
"Kinda," she answered without enthusiasm. "But you see, I went after Caroline."<br />
<br />
"Oh. What did Caroline have to show?"<br />
<br />
"She just got back from Harry Potter World, with lots of souvenirs. She even passed out <i>Every Flavor Jelly Beans</i> for us to eat. One kid got vomit flavor..."<br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-58719762803535307962013-12-23T07:38:00.000-08:002014-01-02T11:21:44.316-08:00A Sporcle-ing opportunity for the holidaysWe are pleased to announce that Who's Bigger has hit the world of Sporcle, the popular website offering "mentally stimulating diversions". In particular, check out your sense of the biggest actors, actresses, and directors at <a href="http://www.sporcle.com/games/rockgolf/american-gravitas" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.sporcle.com/games/<wbr></wbr>rockgolf/</a><a href="http://www.sporcle.com/games/rockgolf/american-gravitas" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">ame</span></a><a href="http://www.sporcle.com/games/rockgolf/american-gravitas" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">rican-gravitas</a>.<br />
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We thank Patrick Kelly for his interest and efforts in putting this together. He is a very experienced hand at this: his Sporcle quizzes have been played more than 10,000,000 times! He promises more <i>Who's Bigger</i> games on Sporcle in the near future, and we will let you know soon as they are available.</div>
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The results of the early responses has been quite revealing. In particular, our most significant director has proven to be the hardest question on the entire board, being answered correctly by only 6.6% of the players. And yet in their post-game comments, this question was called a "head-banger", which I interpret as a problem where you recognize the right answer soon as you are told. This, to me, captures exactly what is interesting about our <i>Who's Bigger</i> rankings. We generally reflect things that you know, but not necessarily what you know you know.<br />
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<b>Update</b><br />
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Patrick has just posted a presidential Who's Bigger quiz, which has already gotten some interesting comments. Check it out at <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px;"> </span><a href="http://www.sporcle.com/games/rockgolf/pulling-rank" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px;" target="_blank">http://www.sporcle.com/<wbr></wbr>games/rockgolf/pulling-rank</a>.</div>
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Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-7419260390134458312013-12-20T06:23:00.000-08:002013-12-20T06:23:25.728-08:00Who Reads the Papers?We have been very gratified by the large volume of press interest in our book/rankings from news outlets in the United Kingdom. I've personally been interviewed by the <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/People/article1352768.ece" target="_blank">Sunday Times</a> and the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523930/Jesus-famous-person-history-according-software-algorithm.html" target="_blank">Daily Mail</a>, and substantive articles have also appeared in the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/jesus-christ-named-historys-most-successful-meme-8994865.html" target="_blank">Independent</a>, the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10520730/Aristotle-or-Britney-whos-the-most-famous-of-them-all.html" target="_blank">Telegraph</a> and the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/16/bigger-than-jesus-historical-rank" target="_blank">Guardian</a>, plus an appearance on the Newstalk radio show with Sean Moncrieff (<a href="http://newstalk.ie/player/listen_back/8/6311/17th_December_2013_-_Moncrieff_Part_2" target="_blank">listen 35 minutes in</a>).<br />
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This response has put to shame what we have received from American newspapers to date. It is probably partially explained by the fact that Cambridge University Press is a British publisher, and presumably has better press contacts there. But it also reflects the greater competition and depth of the British newspaper establishment, with a dozen or so newspapers fighting for circulation among the same population. Not exactly the same. Each newspaper there aims for a distinct audience, as shown in the comedy sketch "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M" target="_blank">Who reads the papers</a>?"<br />
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The truth of this came clear to me during my interviews. The reporter from the Sunday Times sounded like <i>Hugh Grant</i> [6623], an Oxbridge-type whose accent made him appear more cultured and sophisticated than any human can possibly be. By comparison, the reporter from the Daily Mail came across as a street-smart urchin banging out his text from the local pub. When I corresponded with him the next day, he was trapped covering a court hearing in some (no doubt) tawdry case. But I must credit him on his very fast work. We talked only 15 minutes, and I could hear him typing up a quite reasonable story even we spoke.Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-67193185951329885442013-12-16T09:25:00.000-08:002013-12-16T09:25:54.093-08:00Other People's PageRanksTwo recent studies have been brought to our attention, both using PageRank on Wikipedia to analyze historical figures. We were previously unaware of them, and it seems of interest to report how these relate to our own work.<br />
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In <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.3799">Biographical Social Networks on Wikipedia - A cross-cultural study of links that made history</a> by Aragón, Kaltenbrunner, Laniado, and Volkovich, the authors conduct a study on several graph properties (including in-degree, PageRank, and betweeness) for a large set of people pages. Particularly interesting is the fact that they performed their analysis in 15 major languages, providing a test of how the top ranked figures vary across languages.<br />
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These rosters "reveal remarkable similarities between distinct groups of language Wikipedias", which is important in countering a frequent criticism that our English-only analysis results in a grave cultural bias. The differentially ranked figures across different languages are quite interesting, but the take-home lesson is that English-only rankings like ours are more stable than might generally be appreciated. They also observed the women were apparently underrepresented in Wikipedia: see the article in <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427626/the-worrying-consequences-of-the-wikipedia-gender-gap/" target="_blank">MIT Technology Review</a>.<br />
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The second paper, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0074554">Highlighting Entanglement of Cultures via Ranking of Multilingual Wikipedia Articles</a> by Eom and Shepelyansky, was published on October 3, 2013, well after <a href="http://whosbigger.blogspot.com/2013/10/first-printing-has-arrived.html">our book went to press</a>. They analyze Wikipedia in nine languages, using three measures of network centrality: PageRank (based on in-coming links), CheiRank (based on out-going links), and 2DRank (based on both). PageRank generally resulted in the most informative analysis.<br />
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Eom and Shepelyansky are interested in how different cultures evaluate people. By looking at the 30 highest ranked figures of each language, they can identify which historical figures are globally of interest and who are local to particular editions. Generally-speaking, political figures like kings and presidents of nations rank as local heros. By taking a consensus of the figures in the nine languages worth of Wikipedia's, they obtain a global hero ranking. Their top ten are shown below, along with where they appear in our historical ranking:<br />
<ol>
<li>Napoleon (2)</li>
<li>Jesus (1)</li>
<li>Carl Linnaeus (31)</li>
<li>Aristotle (8)</li>
<li>Adolf Hitler (7)</li>
<li>Julius Caesar (15)</li>
<li>Plato (25)</li>
<li>Charlemagne (22)</li>
<li>William Shakespeare (4)</li>
<li>Pope John Paul II (91)</li>
</ol>
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Another just-published article of theirs, <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> <a href="http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/dima/myrefs/my215.pdf" target="_blank">Time Evolution of Wikipedia Network Ranking</a>,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> </span>tracks changes in PageRank and other centrality measures in Wikipedia over time. Finally, in earlier work, they prepared rankings of <a href="http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/QWLIB/2drankwikipedia/" target="_blank">universities, companies, and several groups of people, including comparisons of PageRank against Hart's ``The 100''</a>.</div>
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Obviously the high PageRank figures both teams found in English were exactly the same as we found, modulo minor differences of Wikipedia version number and technical decisions about which pages/links to include. This results in a bit of deja vu as people like Linnaeus, Napoleon, and Elizabeth II rise to uncomfortably high places.<br />
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What we see as the major contributions of our work revolve around: </div>
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<ul>
<li>Integrating other sources of information, like hits, article length, and page edits.</li>
<li>Isolating the distinct factors of celebrity and gravitas underlying all these variables.</li>
<li>Developing a reputation decay model to permit fair comparisons of contemporary and distant historical figures.</li>
<li>Evaluating the resulting rankings against a variety of gold-standards and independent metrics, including other published rankings, public opinion polls, frequency in published books, sports statistics, and the prices of autographs and paintings. We note that our combined significance score significantly outperformed PageRank on these metrics. See page 37 in "Who's Bigger" for details. </li>
<li>And finally using this rankings to perform a systematic study of issues like who belongs in children's American history textbooks, the effectiveness of human decision processes (like recognizing the most appropriate members of a Hall of Fame) and the underrepresentation of women in the historical record.</li>
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Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-89395679300661315492013-12-10T20:01:00.001-08:002013-12-16T07:53:58.254-08:00Our View of "The View"Our book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107041376/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1107041376&linkCode=as2&tag=thealgorithmrepo" target="_blank">Who's Bigger</a>" was the topic of a segment today on the popular ABC-TV talk show "The View", starring Whoopi Goldberg (ranked 3728) and Barbara Walters (ranked 7184). Please <a href="http://youtu.be/Bsy11t8tKfM" target="_blank">check it out</a>: Whoopi's issues with the word "algorithm'' are worth the price of admission. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ-dudqNO2n10yvH_cNYpHaK0VJXt-nf9Afo8NIolaJTfwvy6UglB0Wo8UsCBkuJk4tjLh-XnYXt_brzLsQ2yjK39v7DV_u2dGYt9ARUCBu_3W-AR7QXwwFeOY3uj_G3dsXLwYZYAvF4Q/s1600/view-of-view.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ-dudqNO2n10yvH_cNYpHaK0VJXt-nf9Afo8NIolaJTfwvy6UglB0Wo8UsCBkuJk4tjLh-XnYXt_brzLsQ2yjK39v7DV_u2dGYt9ARUCBu_3W-AR7QXwwFeOY3uj_G3dsXLwYZYAvF4Q/s400/view-of-view.tiff" height="248" width="400" /></a></div>
The notion of identifying the ten most significant people in history clearly caught their fancy, but the four all-women hosts and apparently all-women audience were distressed to learn that our top ten list contained all men. To their credit, the three women they came up with as candidates for our list are <i>exactly</i> the top three women in our rankings: <i>Elizabeth I</i> [13], <i>Queen Victoria</i> [16], and <i>Joan of Arc </i>[95]. Further, they listed them in exactly the right order. Other candidates they proposed included physicist <i>Marie Curie</i> [667] and the first female self-made millionaire in the United States, <i>Madam C. J. Walker</i> [7730], shown above.<br />
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We believe they would be more pleased to hear our results concerning the relative significance of the men and women appearing in Wikipedia, which we write about in ``Who's Bigger''. Over the past 300 years, the average women in Wikipedia is notably more significant than the average man. Our results reveal that women required greater accomplishments (analogous to 4 IQ points in the mean) to be recognized than men, up until very recent history.<br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-22178860251752296272013-12-09T05:34:00.001-08:002013-12-09T05:34:18.614-08:00MandelaThis week marked the passing of Nelson Mandela, the South African leader who was a beacon for the world. An <a href="http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/6277/Paul-Brill/article/detail/3557795/2013/12/07/Verering-van-Mandela-toont-gebrek-aan-iconische-leiders.dhtml" target="_blank">article</a> by Paul Brill in the Dutch newspaper <i>Volkskrant </i>included a discussion of our book to ask the question, "How big was Mandela?"<br />
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<a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Nelson_Mandela" target="_blank">Our methods rank Nelson Mandela at 356</a>, which puts him as the preeminent African leader in history. We rank him in the same neighborhood of other important nation builders, like<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #003366;">Mustafa Kemal Atatürk [360] of Turkey and Giuseppe Garibaldi [352] of Italy, and t</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #003366; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">hese seem like proper comparisons to me.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #003366; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am fortunate to be able to say I once laid eyes on this man. During a trip to London, my attempt to visit a cathedral was blocked by a large crowd, waiting patiently. Mandela was inside, they told me. When he emerged, I was really struck by his presence, his height and erect bearing. He looked every inch the giant that he was.</span><br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-33587958914279145862013-12-04T07:55:00.000-08:002013-12-04T10:07:48.805-08:00Boston Globe Article: Where should Eminem rank?Kevin Hartnett of the Boston Globe wrote a <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/11/29/the-most-important-people-who-ever-lived/b7iNJWdLpWPG13aZnB3lzM/story.html" target="_blank">nice article</a> about the <i>Who's Bigger </i>methodology for ranking people for the Sunday paper, including a <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/11/29/the-most-important-people-who-ever-lived/b7iNJWdLpWPG13aZnB3lzM/igraphic.html" target="_blank">nifty online graphic</a> showing our analysis of painting prices by artist significance. It gave me a fresh chance to kvetch about the $142.4 million recently paid for the <i>Francis Bacon</i> [3470] triptych, discussed in my <a href="http://whosbigger.blogspot.com/2013/11/bringing-home-bacon.html" target="_blank">previous blog post</a>.<br />
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Certain themes are starting to emerge as reviewers get their hands on our book. In particular, there seems a natural instinct to hunt for people whose rankings offend the reviewer's sense of propriety, with the sense of casting doubt on our methods. Typically these suspect cases prove to be popular celebrities such as <i>Eminem</i> [823] and <i>Miley Cyrus</i> [2009], both cited in Hartnett's article.<br />
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It seems wrong to rate these figures as high as our algorithms do, and indeed my gut instinct is that our rankings of these individuals may be a little too high. But it should be clear that historically placing contemporary figures is a particularly difficult task. Reputations are dynamic. Part of our model is based on the frequency people read Wikipedia pages. If ten or twenty years from now such interest in these people declines faster than our current model predicts, their rankings will go down. But today both are among the most famous individuals in the world, and that has to count for something.<br />
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Another way to think about this is to look for the rankings of comparable figures. We rank <i>Mick Jagger</i> at 1055, essentially equivalent to Eminem. My guess is many readers will not blanch at where our algorithms put the Rolling Stones lead singer. It seems to me that Eminem's cultural significance in his time is grossly analogous to that of Jagger in his. Miley Cyrus is more of a stretch at her current ranking, but it seems fair to put her somewhere in the child-star league between <i>Shirley Temple</i> [2177] and <i>Annette Funicello</i> [15957].<br />
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Further, both are young enough that their full story isn't yet written. Our analysis of Google Ngrams suggests that people generally reach their peak book-reference frequency around ages 60 to 70. While this is probably optimistic for most young musicians, it proved to be true for <i>Elvis Presley</i> [69]. Much of what is written about Eminem and Miley Cyrus today could have been said of Elvis in 1960, and yet there are not many figures from the 1950's who will endure with greater historical/cultural significance than the King of Rock and Roll.<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-54967630654123976202013-11-14T12:10:00.000-08:002013-11-14T12:10:22.157-08:00Bringing home the Bacon<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeNCMnDoeaHykI2z6ORCGI5UUtUu4Wd8qEKrlVggpEFGejH9OBteTsDbL1VEogcyWjy4BYqr8R0OLtJo-0YN_DOtc7yGq9mm7AkjM-vmoNgZJTO4i3xeVHb-Vt_9RomC14nI1jYAywWwo/s1600/ALeqM5jr_6bfb0BQvRcFOFz6cOCCXoXg1g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeNCMnDoeaHykI2z6ORCGI5UUtUu4Wd8qEKrlVggpEFGejH9OBteTsDbL1VEogcyWjy4BYqr8R0OLtJo-0YN_DOtc7yGq9mm7AkjM-vmoNgZJTO4i3xeVHb-Vt_9RomC14nI1jYAywWwo/s320/ALeqM5jr_6bfb0BQvRcFOFz6cOCCXoXg1g.jpg" width="320" /></a>The big news in the art world is the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/arts/design/bacons-study-of-freud-sells-for-more-than-142-million.html" target="_blank">record $142.4 million auction price</a> of a Francis Bacon [3470] triptych (three panel painting) of his friend and rival Lucian Freud [9347]. The paintings are large and of an attractive yellow color, and we congratulate the winner on their purchase.<br />
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An analysis in our book <i>Who's Bigger</i> (page 297) correlates the significance of artists to the (logarithm) of their highest sale price. There is a very strong correlation here (0.52): more significant artists command higher prices. My question is whether Francis Bacon, the artist, is big enough for his painting to justify this valuation.<br />
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The previous auction price record was held by "The Scream", by Edvard Munch [944], at a mere $119.9 million. This is a much more famous image, by a much more significant artist than Bacon. We identified over a dozen painters more significant than Munch; indeed we identified a dozen <i>sculptors</i> (a much less elite crowd than painters) more significant than Bacon.<br />
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In our price model, the previous top price for a Francis Bacon painting ($86.2 million) was already an outlier as too expensive for his level of significance. You can get more bang for your buck with several classical or impressionistic masters than star modern painters. I also would personally have one of these hanging on my wall, yellow color or not.<br />
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<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-45184457983299276512013-11-12T09:02:00.000-08:002013-11-14T19:24:46.404-08:00When Death Didn't Take a HolidayNovember 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/John_F._Kennedy" target="_blank">John F. Kennedy</a> [71]. Among the flood of commemorations was the article <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/a-bad-day-to-die.html" target="_blank">``A Bad Day to Die''</a> by <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/christopher_buckley_(novelist)" target="_blank">Christopher Buckley</a> [48317] recalling that writers <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/C._S._Lewis" target="_blank">C. S. Lewis</a> [327] and <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Aldous_Huxley" target="_blank">Aldous Huxley</a> [1179] died on the very same date, and hence were cheated out of a newspaper headline in the aftermath of the assassination.<br />
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This is conjunction was a very impressive coincidence, and motivates a search for what days that were a bad day for getting recognized in the obituaries. The most prominent obituary victim is John Adams [61], who famously died July 4, 1826, the same day as his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson [10]. Other interesting conjunctions include:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Scientists Pierre-Simon Laplace [660] and Alessandro Volta [633] (both on March 5, 1827)</li>
<li>Philosopher Gottlob Frege [839] and William Jennings Bryan [699] (both on July 26, 1925)</li>
<li>Composer Sergei Prokofiev [1177] and Joseph Stalin [18] (both on March 5, 1953)</li>
</ul>
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Our methodology here involved summing up the significance scores of all the people who died on a given date. One might quibble whether this is truly the best criteria, for it can turn a larger number of smaller figures into a badder day than a smaller number of bigger figures.<br />
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However, it does a <i>terrific</i> job identifying dates which are readily understandable as to why several prominent people died that day. See if you can guess why just by looking at the date:<br />
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<ul>
<li>October 16, 1946 (total significance 31.57) -- This was the day of ultimate judgement at Nuremberg: when nine Nazi war criminals were hung for their crimes against humanity. The most significant in this batch was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop">Joachim von Ribbentrop</a> [16547], the German Foreign Minister. He would have taken a back seat to Gestapo founder Hermann Goering, who killed himself the night before to avoid execution.</li>
<li>September 11, 2001 (total significance 30.37) -- The attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Several prominent victims died in these attacks, but much of this total comes from the rankings of the terrorists themselves.</li>
<li>April 15, 1912 (total significance 25.31) -- The sinking of the Titanic. The most prominent single victim was <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/John_Jacob_Astor_IV" target="_blank">John Jacob Astor IV</a>, one of the wealthiest men in the world at that time.</li>
<li>July 17, 1918 (total significance 16.95) -- The execution of the Romanoffs, most prominently Czar Nicholas II of Russia.</li>
<li>November 22, 1963 (total significance 15.24) -- The assassination of President Kennedy, with coincidental deaths of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley</li>
<li>June 25, 1876 (total significance 15.79) -- The Battle of the Little Bighorn, a.k.a as Custer's Last Stand. The most prominent victim was, not surprisingly, <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/George_Armstrong_Custer" target="_blank">George Armstrong Custer</a> [379] himself.</li>
<li>July 3, 1863 (total significance 14.95) -- The last day of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. </li>
<li>February 3, 1959 (total significance 13.97) -- The day the music died: the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly [4408], Ritchie Valens [51845], and The Big Bopper [103549].</li>
<li>March 5, 1953 (total significance 13.25) -- Coincidental deaths of two prominent Russians:, <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Joseph_Stalin" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin</a> [18] and composer Sergei Prokofiev.</li>
<li>June 30, 1934 (total significance 12.83) -- Night of the Long Knives, a purge when Hitler and the Nazis murdered many opposing German political leaders.</li>
<li>July 4, 1826 (total significance 12.46) -- 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the well-known coincidental deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams</li>
</ul>
Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-71956281384562378202013-11-10T09:18:00.000-08:002013-11-12T09:20:30.759-08:00First Bookstore Sighting!Pride of place for the first <i>Who's Bigger</i> bookstore sighting goes to our alert research assistant Qi Chou, at the NYU Bookstore on Sunday November 10th:<br />
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We seem to be in good company, surrounded by <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Woodrow_Wilson" target="_blank">Woodrow Wilson</a> [47], <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/T._E._Lawrence" target="_blank">T. E. Lawrence</a> [1306], and <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Al_Sharpton" target="_blank">Al Sharpton</a> [6589]<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5134653325659172197.post-58945083240839666542013-11-08T07:09:00.002-08:002013-11-08T07:09:48.606-08:00Cousin Hal and Spiro AgnewI received the notice that my cousin Harold Birnbaum just passed away after a long and happy life. He is the source of one of my favorite stories, which essentially revolves around <i>Who's Bigger</i> reasoning for the punch line.<br />
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Cousin Hal had a engineering firm in Iran, prior to the fall of Shah <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/mohammad_reza_pahlavi" target="_blank">Mohammad Reza Pahlavi</a> [1347]. He and his local business partner were discussing the fall of <a href="http://www.whoisbigger.com/entity/Spiro_Agnew" target="_blank">Spiro Agnew</a> [3271], Nixon's first Vice President, who was forced to resign for taking bribes. The amounts involved seem staggeringly small by today's standards, but no one regretted his departure when Nixon himself had to resign just a few years later.<br />
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After thinking the matter over, his partner sighed and remarked: ``America. What a country! You can buy a Vice President for what it costs us to pay off a building inspector!"<br />
<br />Steven Skienahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16923380278093754963noreply@blogger.com0