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.'
Re:objective list (Score:4, Interesting)
It's only the 2dRank list that's screwed up, the PageRank list is a lot more reasonable. I don't know why they even included that 2dRank list, it ruins their credibility. The methodology doesn't even make sense. PageRank works based on determining how influential you are based on how much things link to you. Makes sense, right? Well, 2dRank uses that *plus* how much you link to other people. Why should how much you link to other people have any significance on how influential you are? Perhaps how influenced you are, but certainly not how influential you are.
Making stupid claims makes people stop listening to what you have to say. It's like you're sitting on a bus and you see the following sign: "1. This is a space ship. 2. No smoking". The demonstrable falsity of the first part undermines the credibility of the second part.
Re:Carl Linnaeus? Here's why: (Score:4, Interesting)
It takes a special kind of ignorance to deny history [wikipedia.org], you should have read the Wiki page before posting. And no, you are not smarter than the the majority of reputable historians who have satisfactory proof that Jesus was a real person. (Be cautions with demanding absolute proof, because there are no historical persons that can be proven absolutely).
What people do debate are the acts performed by Jesus, because there are a limited number corroborating written records of many events recorded in books added to the Christian Bible. The same historians who agree that Jesus exists will give you those events as well. You should really learn to study history, it's fascinating stuff and will make you look less foolish when posting.
Re:Jesus isn't that influential (Score:5, Interesting)
If you believe that then you believe nonsense. The lack of personal belief in the divinity of Jesus and his offer of salvation doesn't undo his enormous influence as Messiah, the subsequent spread of Christianity beyond its Jewish origin, and the enormous influence Christianity has had in turn on religion, literature, music, law, and many other aspects of life and culture across the globe.
You confuse the religion with the picture they decided to hang on their walls. It's like saying the greek gods are still very powerful because whole planets are named after them. Jesus supplied the persona unto which the church then projected everything they wanted to have accepted without questioning. At this point, he stops being a person and instead becomes an idea. To be fair, you should remove him from the comparison because he belongs into a different conceptual class.
The same is true of some ancient philosophers and many kings. We have a couple kings in history who basically did nothing, and yet their names stand for an entire period of their country.