Most notable figures in every field

Stats sourced from this publication:

• Laouenan, M., Bhargava, P., Eyméoud, JB. et al. A cross-verified database of notable people, 3500BC-2018AD. Sci Data 9, 290 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01369-4

A new strand of literature aims at building the most comprehensive and accurate database of notable individuals. We collect a massive amount of data from various editions of Wikipedia and Wikidata. Using deduplication techniques over these partially overlapping sources, we cross-verify each retrieved information. For some variables, Wikipedia adds 15% more information when missing in Wikidata. We find very few errors in the part of the database that contains the most documented individuals but nontrivial error rates in the bottom of the notability distribution, due to sparse information and classification errors or ambiguity. Our strategy results in a cross-verified database of 2.29 million individuals (an elite of 1/43,000 of human being having ever lived), including a third who are not present in the English edition of Wikipedia. Data collection is driven by specific social science questions on gender, economic growth, urban and cultural development. We document an Anglo-Saxon bias present in the English edition of Wikipedia, and document when it matters and when not.

They have 5 variables which can be used to rank individuals

• number_wiki_editions: number of different Wikipedia editions;

• non_missing_score: total number of non-missing items retrieved from Wikipedia or Wikidata for birth date, gender and domain of influence;

• total_count_words: total number of words in all biographies from Wikipedia;

• wiki_readers_2015_2018: average per year number of page views in all Wikipedia editions (information retrieved in 2015–2018);

• total_noccur_links: total number of external links (sources, references, etc.) from Wikidata;

I then created a composite of each of these 5 variables by extracting the first principal component of all 5 variables, which was then transformed to have a maximum of 100 and minimum of 0 within the whole dataset, which allows fields to be compared in terms of notability as well. The omega reliability of the ranking was 0.8 — not great, but not terrible either. Comparable to a high quality personality test or a SAT section.

Some age bias within the indicators, where birth data correlates with readers, but negatively with the number of links/references

As there are close to 5000 different occupations here, I limited this analysis to the top 100, from which I took the lists that were either interesting or highly accurate.

First, the overall ranking:

2015-2018

Academia

I posted the list just because I like Schopenhauer. Otherwise it’s not a great list — “academic” is not a very useful way to categorize people.

Activism

Acting

One of the most accurate ones here. But a few people (e.g. Prince) should be excluded.

Anthropology

Mengele? An anthropologist?

Art

Suffers from the same problem as the term “academic” — too generic.

Astronomer

Decent list.

Author

A good list that unfortunately suffers from a few bad entries (e.g. Ivana Trump)

Biology

Looks fine to me.

Boxing

Chemistry

Chess

Composing

Great man… Great man… Great man… Great man… Great man… Nicki Minaj.

Economy

Engineering

Entrepreneurship

Exploring

Film

Football

Golf

Guitar

History

Machiavelli doesn’t belong here.

Journalism

Ruling

Law

Wild list.

Modeling

Music

Avicii died in 2018, around the time this data was being collected.

Novel writing.

Painting

Philosophy

Had Aristotle been included, he would have been first.

Physics

Well…

Tennis

Interesting top 3.

Playwriting

Poetry

Politics

Psychology

Sculpting

Singing

Sociology

Sprinting

Swimming

Wrestling

Writing

Voltaire and Rousseau are writers as much as Nietzsche is. And… PewDiePie?

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