PageRank-Type Algorithm From the 1940s Discovered

KentuckyFC writes "The PageRank algorithm (pdf) behind Google's success was developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998. It famously judges a page to be important if it is linked to by other important pages. This circular definition is the basis of an iterative mechanism for ranking pages. Now a paper tracing the history of iterative ranking algorithms describes a number of earlier examples. It discusses the famous HITS algorithm for ranking web pages as hubs and authorities developed by Jon Kleinberg a few years before PageRank. It also discusses various approaches from the 1960s and 70s for ranking individuals and journals based on the importance of those that endorse them. But the real surprise is the discovery of a PageRank-type algorithm for ranking sectors of an economy based on the importance of the sectors that supply them, a technique that was developed by the Harvard economist Wassily Leontief in 1941."

Comments

Re:Patent?

[Meshach]

So it could be used as previous art to invalidate Google's patent?

From my read of the linked article it seems that Sergey and Larry cited the previous art in their publications. So it looks like there was no plagiarism, just building a new idea using the tools provided by an earlier idea.

Or there's the number ...

[PPH]

... of times one Pharaoh's cartouche was chiseled into the obelisks beloning to other Pharaohs.

Re:Good advice for all developers

[cyphercell]

It would have been a pretty exhaustive search without google.

Re:linearity

[Ibiwan]

From a naive, off-the-cuff armchair analysis, it seems to me that PageRank only serves as a way to provide ordering of search results. Funny thing... sorting on positive values will always yield the same ordering as a sort on those values' logs.