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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.'
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.'
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.
#DeleteChrome
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.
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.
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”
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
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
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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.
Monstar L
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)
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org