{"id":842,"date":"2010-11-08T22:07:26","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T20:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/?p=842"},"modified":"2010-11-08T22:08:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T20:08:20","slug":"problems-with-using-ranks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/problems-with-using-ranks\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranks or … whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last Good & Bad<\/a> post already dealt with using ranks and certain related problems, but the thing Udo pointed me to is really of extraordinary absurdity.<\/p>\n

The Daily Mail has a feature about the most popular names<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The problem is already explained in the footnote such that I don’t need to comment any further – who would ever consider publishing statistics like this?<\/p>\n

Even better is the list of the most powerful people in Forbes:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Forbes, the list is created along four dimensions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “First, we asked if a person has influence over a lot of people?”<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. “Second, we checked to see if they have significant financial resources relative to their peers”<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. “Then we determined if they were powerful in multiple spheres”<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. “Finally, we insisted that they actively wield their power”<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now, just find a way to measure these dimensions – which is quite subjective for at least 3. and 4., but already hard for 2. . Then define some weights for the four dimensions, and finally make an (arbitrary) selection of candidates: almost anything goes!<\/p>\n

    PS: If we do not include variant spellings for ‘Mohammed’ the name would end up on rank 16 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The last Good & Bad post already dealt with using ranks and certain related problems, but the thing Udo pointed me to is really of extraordinary absurdity. The Daily Mail has a feature about the most popular names: The problem is already explained in the footnote such that I don’t need to comment any further […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-reference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}