Jesus, Elvis, and Aristotle: Who’s bigger?

St. Louis Post-Dispatch ^ | 12/14/2013 | Cathy Lynn Grossman

[rwa265]

He’s a man with a ton of titles — Prince of Peace, Son of God, Shepherd of Souls — but now Jesus has one more: the biggest name in human history. Ever. So say the authors of a startling new book, “Who’s Bigger: Where Historical Figures Really Rank,” which tries to settle, once and for all, the question of who’s who. It’s a work of “culturometrics,” a fancy term to describe quantitative data analysis applied to individuals in society the same way Sabermetrics tracks performance in baseball, pundits aggregate polls in elections, and algorithms rule computer search engines. “Bigger” is a complex collection of lists and rankings, but none is more provocative than its Top 100: Jesus is No. 1, Adolf Hitler is No. 7, everyone is overwhelmingly white and 97 are male.

But keep your blood pressure in check. “Bigger does not mean better,” said co-author Steven Skiena, a computer science professor at Stony Brook University where he heads the Data Science Laboratory.

To research “Bigger,” Skiena and Charles Ward, an engineer on the ranking team at Google, created a complex amalgam of measures. To establish their “significance” ranking, they assessed more than 800,000 names, calculated scores of celebrity and achievement or gravitas and then factored in how long, and how long ago, someone lived.

Hence the Top 10 names need no introduction:

1. Jesus

2. Napoleon Bonaparte

3. Muhammad

4. William Shakespeare

5. Abraham Lincoln

6. George Washington

7. Adolf Hitler

8. Aristotle

9. Alexander the Great

10. Thomas Jefferson

[Fiji Hill]

I got the complete list on the Amazon.com site. When the book comes up, click on “look inside” and then surf over to page 5.

[Fiji Hill]

I feel a song coming on

It's December, so how about a Christmas song?

[Steve_Seattle]

Where are the scientists, mathematicians, explorers and industrialists? Einstein, Newton, Euclid, Boole, Pythagoras, Galileo, Crick, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Columbus, etc.?

[Conspiracy Guy]

Great song. Haven’t heard it in a while. Now it’s bookmarked.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Where was Buddy Holly on the list?

[HerrBlucher]

John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. However, I am pretty sure he said that sarcastically in response to the silliness of Beatlemania.

[Finny]

Jesus, Elvis, and Aristotle: Who's bigger?

On a hot, smoggy summer afternoon driving the freeway though the dregs, the low ebb back desert of south-eastern Southern Californian metropolis of more than 10 million souls ... grim, dry shack-like homesteads amid an ongoing litter of industrial complexes, railroad yards and junkyards ... an abandoned railroad container with the words "Jesus Saves" painted on the side, like a beacon, visible to millions. More than 2,000 years in the future from His sacrifice.

Elvis Presley once publicly berated fans who compared him to Jesus, more or less saying it was blasphemy. Elvis was deeply reverent of Christ.

[rwa265]

Elvis was deeply reverent of Christ

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My favorite Elvis song is “I Believe” from his 1957 Christmas Album.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks rwa265.

> It’s a work of “culturometrics,” a fancy term to describe quantitative data analysis applied to individuals in society the same way Sabermetrics tracks performance in baseball, pundits aggregate polls in elections, and algorithms rule computer search engines. “Bigger” is a complex collection of lists and rankings, but none is more provocative than its Top 100: Jesus is No. 1, Adolf Hitler is No. 7, everyone is overwhelmingly white and 97 are male.