Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History 231
KentuckyFC writes: 'In 1978, the American researcher Michael Hart published The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, a book that became an international best seller. Since then, various others have published similar lists. But all suffer the same drawback: they are subjective list ultimately influenced by numerous cultural factors. Now data scientists have come up with a way to extract an objective list of the 100 most influential people in history using the network of links between biographical articles on Wikipedia and how they vary between 24 different language editions, including English, Chinese, Russian Arabic and so on. The researchers assume that people who are highly ranked in different language editions are influential across both language cultures and that the more appearances they make in different language editions, the more influential they are. But the actual ranking is done by PageRank-like algorithms that consider a biographical article important if it is pointed to by other important articles.
The resulting lists of the most influential men and women might surprise. The top PageRanked individual is Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist who developed the modern naming scheme for plants and animals, followed by Jesus. The top PageRanked women are: Elizabeth II followed by Mary (mother of Jesus). For comparison, just under half of the top 100 most influential also appear in Hart's 1978 book. But this is just the beginning. By counting the individuals from one culture that influence other cultures, the team is able to work out which cultures have dominated others. And by looking only at people born before certain dates, they can see how the influence of different cultures has waxed and waned throughout 35 centuries of recorded history.'
The resulting lists of the most influential men and women might surprise. The top PageRanked individual is Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist who developed the modern naming scheme for plants and animals, followed by Jesus. The top PageRanked women are: Elizabeth II followed by Mary (mother of Jesus). For comparison, just under half of the top 100 most influential also appear in Hart's 1978 book. But this is just the beginning. By counting the individuals from one culture that influence other cultures, the team is able to work out which cultures have dominated others. And by looking only at people born before certain dates, they can see how the influence of different cultures has waxed and waned throughout 35 centuries of recorded history.'
Yeah, right (Score:5, Funny)
Given those of us the world calls "nerds" seemingly have a weakness for championing the lesser-known, and given that nerd-driven edits are a disproportionately large percentage of Wikipedia edits... it's not surprising someone like Linnaeus has the top spot.
Really, the biggest surprise isn't that Linnaeus outranks Jesus - it's that Jesus managed to outrank Joss Whedon.
Re:What about the dud that came up with fire? (Score:2, Funny)
It's weird that Jesus made the list but Batman didn't. In fact, he was the only fictional character mentioned.
Re:Yeah, right (Score:2, Funny)
Joss Whedon's shows have female characters that nerds like to envision while masturbating.
Oh, and tend to have witty quips that can be quoted to other nerds. But it's mostly the masturbation thing.