Who''s Bigger? : Where Historical Figures Really Rank

In this fascinating book, Skiena and Ward bring quantitative analysis to bear on ranking and comparing historical reputations, aggregating the traces of millions of opinions, as Google ranks webpages. They present rankings of thousands of history's most significant people in science, politics, entertainment, and all areas of human endeavor.

Is Hitler bigger than Napoleon? Washington bigger than Lincoln? Picasso bigger than Einstein? Quantitative analysts are rapidly finding homes in social and cultural domains, from finance to politics. What about history? In this fascinating book, Steve Skiena and Charles Ward bring quantitative analysis to bear on ranking and comparing historical reputations. They evaluate each person by aggregating the traces of millions of opinions, just as Google ranks webpages. The book includes a technical discussion for readers interested in the details of the methods, but no mathematical or computational background is necessary to understand the rankings or conclusions. Along the way, the authors present the rankings of more than one thousand of history''s most significant people in science, politics, entertainment, and all areas of human endeavor. Anyone interested in history or biography can see where their favorite figures place in the grand scheme of things.