Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History

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.'

Comments

objective list

[dasacc22]

subjectively titled ...

Re:objective list

[mestar]

Where is the actual list?

Re:objective list

[Rei]

Annoying isn't it? Why do people link to (or write in the first place) an article about a list, and then not include the list? Where's the logic in that? Anyway, I dug through the supporting data fo the paper and found it, then ran it through a simple bash script to strip extraneous information. I'm only including the PageRank version because the methodology is more logical and the results more reasonable (the 2D rank version is mostly pop-culture).

1. Carl Linnaeus
2. Jesus
3. Aristotle
4. Napoleon
5. Adolf Hitler
6. Julius Caesar
7. Plato
8. William Shakespeare
9. Albert Einstein
10. Elizabeth II
11. Alexander the Great
12. Isaac Newton
13. Muhammad
14. Karl Marx
15. Joseph Stalin
16. Augustus
17. Christopher Columbus
18. Charlemagne
19. Louis XIV of France
20. George W. Bush
21. Immanuel Kant
22. Barack Obama
23. Mary (mother of Jesus)
24. Vladimir Lenin
25. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
26. Paul the Apostle
27. Charles Darwin
28. Martin Luther
29. Herodotus
30. Franklin D. Roosevelt
31. Galileo Galilei
32. Pope John Paul II
33. Constantine the Great
34. Benito Mussolini
35. Cicero
36. Ren Descartes
37. Saint Peter
38. Ludwig van Beethoven
39. George Washington
40. Moses
41. Johann Sebastian Bach
42. Bill Clinton
43. Leonardo da Vinci
44. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
45. Gautama Buddha
46. Winston Churchill
47. John F. Kennedy
48. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
49. Pope Benedict XVI
50. Richard Nixon
51. Sigmund Freud
52. Ronald Reagan
53. Abraham Lincoln
54. Saddam Hussein
55. Ptolemy
56. Richard Wagner
57. Diocletian
58. Queen Victoria
59. Napoleon III
60. Charles de Gaulle
61. Mao Zedong
62. William Herschel
63. Michael Jackson
64. Justinian I
65. Augustine of Hippo
66. Ali
67. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
68. Ernst Haeckel
69. Pliny the Elder
70. Pope Gregory XIII
71. Confucius
72. Henry VIII of England
73. Thomas Jefferson 74. Francisco Franco 75. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 76. Pierre Andr Latreille 77. Pope Paul VI 78. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 79. Chiang Kai-shek 80. John Herschel 81. Elizabeth I of England 82. J. R. R. Tolkien 83. Socrates 84. Genghis Khan 85. Qin Shi Huang 86. Umar 87. Philip II of Spain 88. Frederick the Great 89. Johannes Kepler 90. Emperor Wu of Han 91. Friedrich Nietzsche 92. Plutarch 93. Thomas Edison 94. Max Weber 95. Dante Alighieri 96. Ashoka 97. Tacitus 98. Ernst Mayr 99. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck 100. Elvis Presley

Not a bad list, honestly. Still not sure why Linnaeus is *that* high, but most of the rest is quite reasonable, methinks.

Oh, and because Slashdot is complaining, "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 19.0)": Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat c

Re:objective list

[Rei]

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:objective list

[antifoidulus]

How is that list not weighted not only by recent events, but also Euro/Ameri-centric? Seriously, Obama AND Bush in the list of most influential people in history? In terms of overall impact, they wouldn't even make the list of top 10 us presidents. Seriously, no Harry Truman? Truman was, in terms of global impact, probably the most influential US president of all time. He was the one who decided to drop the atomic bombs, he was the one that oversaw the dismantling of the Japanese empire(one of the biggest events in the past century, but one most people know nothing about it), he was the one that really started the domino theory etc. Certainly more influential than either Bush or Obama.

Re:objective list

[interiot]

Wikipedia is very slanted towards recent and Eurocentric events.

Yes, this is somewhat explainable in terms of how much literature has been produced over time, and how much literature is accessible online. Wikipedia isn't the problem here, the problem is that the authors didn't acknowledge this issue, let alone attempt to account for it in their computation. (though it's a long paper, so I might have missed where it was discussed)

Re:objective list

[dotancohen]

Note that Aristotle outranks Plato, who then outranks Socrates by a huge margin. Considering that the influence of one upon the other is _exactly backwards,_ I do agree that this list may be an _unordered_ list of very influential people, but it certainly is not an _ordered_ list. Thus there is no #1.

Re:objective list

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just another stupid list skewed by bias. Charles Linneaus? I'm man enough to admit I've never heard of him (yeah I skipped Biology), and I'll bet my right nut no-one I know has either. I hate religion as much as anyone, but you'd be hard pressed to go past the influence Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha have had on modern human history (if we want to be really objective we might have to include Zeus, Odin, Ra and all those other weirdos)...

You need to get educated; and pick better friends.

Re:objective list

[AthanasiusKircher]

Note that Aristotle outranks Plato, who then outranks Socrates by a huge margin. Considering that the influence of one upon the other is _exactly backwards,_ I do agree that this list may be an _unordered_ list of very influential people, but it certainly is not an _ordered_ list.

By this logic, the most influential person who ever lived should be the first person who ever lived -- as that person influenced the next person, who influenced the next person, etc., etc., etc.

Obviously that sounds like a bad metric, which makes sense if you actually consider Aristotle's notions of causality. In particular, the notion of proximate vs. ultimate cause is important. One can always go back further in the train of causality, perhaps all the way to the Big Bang or whatever. The question isn't who ultimately set the train of influence in motion, but rather which historical figures have had contributions or ideas whose influence spread most widely. Socrates's parents or some of his random teachers were probably influential on his development, but I sincerely doubt anyone thinks they should be on this list.

Anyhow, getting to the specific point -- Aristotle most certainly deserves to be further up this list than the others. When medieval and renaissance writers made a statement like, "As the philosopher said..." the "philosopher" was always assumed to be Aristotle. He was THE philosopher, and his views on everything from philosophical issues like causality (as mentioned) to logic to all sorts of scientific principles contributed, perhaps more than any other thinker, to the development of medieval and early modern thought. It was only in the 17th century that any serious attempts were made to break away from the prevailing Aristotelean mode of thought on many issues.

And even after that, his ideas have remained hugely influential -- some credit Darwinian concepts of evolution on Aristotle's notions of a "final cause" (probably via Lamarck). Certainly most of our narratives about history are formulated according to this principle: we generally don't tend to care much about why people in the past thought the way they did -- instead, we highlight elements of the past that lead up to the present day, so we can see a "progression" of ideas toward our present, in effect a search for the "final cause."

Meanwhile, Plato (or, rather Neo-platonism) was certainly influential in the Hellenistic period, as well as the early medieval period, but it was arguably the rediscovery of Aristotle that made significant contributions to the renaissance of the 12th and 13th centuries. The rediscovery of ancient knowledge at this time arguably influenced the quest to find more (and the later "renaissance" most people talk about), and the advances in scientific ideas and empiricism from this time laid the foundations for the development of modern science. Plato was much less important for these trends (though he still was quite important for some elements of philosophy and political theory).

As for Socrates, well, 99% of what we know of him comes through the dramatic dialogues concerning him written by Plato. If Socrates really said and did most of the things Plato ascribed to him, then Plato shouldn't be on the list at all -- it was really only Socrates. But, as most scholars think is more likely, if Socrates was merely the inspiration and teacher of Plato (where Plato added a lot of details himself), then the products of Plato's work were significantly more influential than Socrates himself. There's a reason the academy was known as Plato's academy and why we get "Platonism" and "Neo-platonism" as significant movements. (Socrates's influence in terminology is usually confined to a few specific terms, like the "Socratic method," rather than entire philosophical movements.)

Yeah, right

[93 Escort Wagon]

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:Yeah, right

[rogoshen1]

I think he got the top spot due to the fact that just about every single critter on this planet has a link back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... on their page.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yeah, right

[Samantha Wright]

Exactly. The results of this study could not be more bullshit. It's the kind of "why would you even bother doing that" study that should make people double over laughing.

Influence?

[Livius]

An interesting study, but nothing about the rankings has anything to do with measuring being 'influential'.

Re:Influence?

[Meshach]

An interesting study, but nothing about the rankings has anything to do with measuring being 'influential'.

I guess it is "influential" in the same way that Google news shows the most "influential" sites covering a significant story. Influential means "conforms most to the prevailing viewpoint" (at least in this case). These are the ones that the most people read and hence the most influential.

Re:Influence?

[shaitand]

It depends on how you define influential. The winner is responsible for the name used in every culture in the world for every single living thing on Earth. Most people have never heard of him but he has certainly influence quite a bit.

Re:Influence?

[phantomfive]

It's a good point, and there is some question about the idea of using pagerank on Wikipedia as a method for measuring influential people. For one thing, it has a bias towards most recent events. They used two different algorithms for ranking influence in the English version of Wikipedia. The first version ended up with this list: "Napoleon, Barack Obama, Carl Linnaeus, Elizabeth II and George W Bush." At least it's bipartisan.

Another problem with pagerank on Wikipedia is the bias towards popularity. "Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Pope Pius XII, Elton John and Elizabeth II." Was Frank Sinatra more influential than Michael Jackson?

Going from that high quality single-language ranking, they tried to rank across languages. With their second algorithm, this is what they ended up with: "Adolf Hitler, Michael Jackson, Madonna (the singer) and Ludwig Van Beethoven." I really like Beethoven, but.....

If your algorithm only matches the pre-existing ranking by 50%, that might be an indication that your algorithm isn't getting good data. In fact, the scientists involved have some doubt about the quality of their research, saying: “Our analysis shows that most important historical gures across Wikipedia language editions are born in Western countries after the 17th century, and are male”

Re:Jesus is Number One

[Immerman]

What do you expect of a man that practically nobody had heard of until centuries after his death?

Re:What about the dud that came up with fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's weird that Jesus made the list but Batman didn't. In fact, he was the only fictional character mentioned.

Carl Linnaeus? Here's why:

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to know why Carl Linnaeus is on top of that list? Every Wikipedia article about an Animal or a Plant has an infobox, containing their binomial name. And the person who got to name the animal or plant is linked in said infobox. Since Mr. Linnaeus basically created the binomial nomenclature, he named thousands upon thousands of species. Thus, he is linked from thousands upon thousands of articles about all kinds of animals and plants. Here's a random example. Notice the "L." at the bottom of the infobox. So, basically, Mr. Linnaeus is being Google.. ahem, Wikipedia-bombed.

Re:Carl Linnaeus? Here's why:

[iNaya]

I'd consider the person that named every fucking species on Earth to be pretty influential.

Re:Carl Linnaeus? Here's why:

[Jiro]

It's more influential than you or I, but it's not more influential than Jesus. The problem is that he's more influential in areas specifically related to the Wikipedia format.

If every page about someone born in August contained a link to Augustus Caesar, this would conclude that he's the most influential person in history.

Re:Carl Linnaeus? Here's why:

[s.petry]

It takes a special kind of ignorance to deny history, 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.

I suspect Carl is top for the sole reason

[queazocotal]

that he invented the classification system for organisms.
And there are a _LOT_ of stub articles for the Lesser Spotted Garden Slimy Thing, that link to 'biological classification' and hence Carls page. (can you tell I can't spell his second name?

Is it even worth the time to RTFA? Seems flawed.

[Ecuador]

Correct me if I am wrong, but even from the summary I get a strong suspicion this "research" is heavily flawed. I mean, the only way for "Carl Linnaeus" would be on the top spot would be if you blindly applied a sort of page-rank algorithm forgetting to only include non-standardized parts of pages. A significant percentage of Wikipedia pages on all languages are about the various species of plant or animal life, all of which have a stub which contains the link to "Scientific classification" perhaps also to "Binomial name", both of which feature Linnaeus prominently.
It reminds me a spider my boss had built to get a few thousands of pages to construct a word frequency list, and I had to point out that it needed some work, since words like "print", "home" etc were not in the top-5 most common words of the English language.

Re:Hitler?

[Ksevio]

Want to guess how I know that you didn't RTFA? The main article even has a photo of him!

On the overall ranking, Hitler is ranked #5 after Carl Linnaeus, Jesus, Aristotle, and Napoleon
For the 2DRank (places emphasis on outgoing links as well as incoming) he's #1

what utter bullshit!

[lophophore]

Michael Jackson, and Hitler?

What utter bullshit!

This is like mining Facebook to decide who the best rock band ever was! Think there's any bias?

My vote goes to Gutenberg. You want to talk about inflection points in human knowledge? Gutenberg, and then Tim Berners-Lee.

Jeff

Re:Ah, Americans

[shaitand]

Actually the only piece of actual evidence of the existence of Christ as a real person is an entry in the histories written by the Jewish historian Josephus. Those histories are not originals of course, in fact they are all copies made by the Catholics. There are no shortage of changes made by those copiers including additions and changes from the original text that have been detected by comparing various copies that were altered in different ways. The only thing that makes people who know what they are talking about say Jesus probably lived vs probably did not live is the subjective opinion of a few scholars (mostly theist scholars) who studied the passages in question and subjectively think they seem like the style of Josephus.

Given the thinking of the day it would be the most natural thing in the world for a Monk to "correct" a "mistake" in a history that failed to record the trial and death of Jesus and to patch it up with the details from their bible.

Jesus isn't that influential

[rsilvergun]

if you're not a Christian. If you don't believe he was the son of god then he was just preacher whose particular sect took off. The Roman Emperor that convertered to Christianity after being 'saved' is the real power behind Christianity...

Re:Jesus isn't that influential

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you aren't Christian, your civilization has probably been influenced (converted, overrun, allied) by one that was acting in Jesus' name.

Re:Jesus isn't that influential

[cold fjord]

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.

A non-Christian may not hold to the belief and sentiment that inspired Handal's Messiah, but the music is still played and sung. They don't cease to exist because of non-belief. The same holds true for the rest of the influence Jesus has had though the spread of Christianity.

Christianity spread in the Roman empire despite persecution. But if you think a Roman emperor 1700 years ago was the "real power" behind Christianity, how do you explain this today? The Romans are long gone.

China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years
Study: Christianity grows exponentially in Africa

You seem to be underestimating the influence of Jesus.

The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven

Re:Jesus isn't that influential

[Tom]

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.

this seems silly

[whistlingtony]

I know who Michael Jackson is. I can't say he influences my actions very much. I know his name. I don't actually know anything about him. I know who Napoleon is. I can't say that he influences my actions much either. Etc etc etc..... By their methodology, I just name dropped these two guys. Big whoop. Doesn't make them influential.

Re:Linnaeus cheated

[rasmusbr]

Not a bad list, honestly. Still not sure why Linnaeus is *that* high, but most of the rest is quite reasonable, methinks.

I would have to agree. I think that Linnaeus has gamed the system a bit. Every (or at least most) Wikipedia articles about a plant or animal species would have a link to back to Linnaeus or his nomenclature system. While he was certainly a notable scientist, he was in no way as influential as most of the others on the list. Perhaps I should change my name to "Citation Needed" so I would be the most influential person in history (according to this methodology).

He gamed the system more than that... Every Wikipedia article about a species contains a link to whoever named that species. And Linnaeus named a lot of species, something close to 10,000! He had a good head start on everyone else seeing as he came up with the naming system. He especially named pretty much all of the species that have the most "mindshare", the same ones that now have long and highly ranked Wikipedia articles.