According to our rankings, he finished as the 23rd most influential person in recorded history, which should satisfy any playwright.
In case anybody cares…
Of the remaining 16 names, the lowest Hart-ranked name is Sui Wen Ti (85) (Lenin is close as his original rank was 84).
The highest Hart-ranked person to be kicked off is Jesus (#3 for Hart, #26 for the SDMB).
There are only four of Hart’s top-10 left: Gutenberg, Confucius, Newton, and Mohammed.
The biggest loser is (and will be) Columbus, who lost 72 spots. Hart ranked him @ #9, we have him as #81.
The biggest winners (so far) are Francis Bacon and Mao Zedong, both of whom gained 50 spots - Bacon is 90 on Harts list, 40 on ours, while Mao is 89 on Harts list and 39 on ours.
When all is said and done, I’ll post the final rankings of all 100 names.
Inventors. Thomas Edison
Leaders. Lenin
Philosophy. Confucius
Science. Albert Einstein
Science was hard, but it’s difficult to argue that Einstein had as broad and far-reaching an influence as the other three who are really foundational in mathematics, physics and biology respectively.
JohnT, how are you ranking people who got voted off at the same time? That seems unfair to the folks in the smaller categories.
:smack:
You’re right. I didn’t even think about that.
Anyway, what I’m doing is ranking them according to how they fell in our game, then tying that to Hart’s list. As you noted, this means that there will be no religious people in the top-20 other than Mohammed.
Any suggestions (from anybody) about how to do a final ranking?
Inventors. Thomas Edison
Leaders. Sui Wen Ti
Philosophy. Plato
Science. Euclid
The only other approach I can think of would be to rank them according to how far they got in their category (so Paul, for example, would fall in the 6-10 range). But then you have the problem of no religious people in the bottom 20, which also seems skewed.
I could probably “weigh” the categories so that they will be more even. For example (pulling numbers out of my ass) I could weigh the religious category as 1.2 points for every vote, the Leader category .9 points for every vote, etc, so that each category = 20% each.
Then we’ll have people saying that one category isn’t as important as another, but I can’t do anything about that.
Invention. James Watt
Leaders. Genghis Khan
Philosophy. Confucius
Science. Euclid
Invention. James Watt
Leaders. Lenin
Philosophy. Confucius
Science. Euclid
0-4 last round.
Inventor. James Watt
Leader. V.I. Lenin
Philosophy. Plato
Science. Charles Darwin
Lot of people voting to get rid of Euclid. I’d like to see what Newton would have done without Euclidean geometry. It’s kind of necessary for the development of calculus, isn’t it?
Inventors. Thomas Edison
Leaders. Lenin
Philosophy. Confucius
Science. Charles Darwin
Archytas? Eudoxus? Archimedes? Apollonius? Euclid probably wasn’t even among the four most talented mathematicians of that era. His books were important, but other Greeks were aware of most of the material and it would probably have been published anyway without Euclid.
Inventors. Thomas Edison
Leaders. Genghis Khan
Philosophy. Plato
Science. Euclid
Given the choice, I would have probably voted out many of the philosophers before many of the other people in the different categories. Dividing them into categories was a very nice idea though, as dealing with a huge list of 100 people would have been cumbersome.
There probably isn’t a way to do it that would perfectly satisfy everyone. You could always make 5 separate lists, one for each category, but that wouldn’t have the good feeling of a big list. It would be interesting to see the Hart list rankings in the context of the 5 categories. For example it could say that Mao was the 5th least important leader on the Hart list, and the 13th least important leader according to our votes. if that’s not too much trouble of course.
It’s been a really interesting thread, and you have my thanks for organizing it. I’m sure people will accept any solution you decide on.
John, back in the OP you said that when we get down to the final five, we’ll have a single round for the ultimate winner. If possible, I’d prefer a four round elimination. Vote off the least influential one-by-one until we have the winner.
What if we eached ranked the final five in our preferred order, and John calculated the final standings that way? Kind of like an MVP vote.
I think Euclid was important because of the format he wrote in. His system of presenting formal proofs was a useful model in the development of the scientific method. It said that it wasn’t enough to just have a lucky guess or a plausible theory - you had to be able to show a chain of evidence that led to your conclusion.
Inventions. Johann Gutenberg
Leader. George Washington
Philosophy. Confucius
Science. Albert Einstein
JohnT,
There is no mechanism that will produce a “better” result. To start that analysis you have to either assign each category with either the same gravitas or quantitatively rank them.
I can’t see any problem with stopping at garlands for the five individual category winners, but the game probably requires an absolute winner.