Can Wikipedia Tell Us the Most Significant Person in History?
The computer scientists and ranking enthusiasts Steven Skiena and Charles Ward used Google’s Page-Rank algorithm to determine the most significant people of all time. Here are the top twenty, from their book, Who’s Bigger: Where Historical Figures Really Rank:
1. Jesus
2. Napoleon
3. Mohammed
4. William Shakespeare
5. Abraham Lincoln
6. George Washington
7. Adolf Hitler
8. Aristotle
9. Alexander the Great
10. Thomas Jefferson
11. Henry VIII
12. Charles Darwin
13. Elizabeth I
14. Karl Marx
15. Julius Caesar
16. Queen Victoria
17. Martin Luther
18. Joseph Stalin
19. Albert Einstein
20. Christopher Columbus
“If numerous Wikipedia pages end up linking to Abraham Lincoln,” explains a skeptical Cass Sunstein in this New Republic review, “we have a clue that Lincoln was a major figure.” Of course, there are many problems with this significance ranking, including the fact, which Sunstein points out, that Skiena and Ward only used the English language version of Wikipedia.
But the larger (infectious) question is how can we account for a human being’s contribution to the world, and what exactly does that mean. Does significance equal excellence or influence or what?
