The authors used the
English Wikipedia as their primary data source, and ran the data through
algorithms written into computer programs to arrive at a ranking of all historical figures. According to the authors, a higher ranking indicates greater
historical significance. Skiena and Ward compared all English Wikipedia articles against five criteria: two that draw on Google
PageRank, and three that draw on internal Wikipedia metrics: the number of times the page has been viewed, the number of edits to the page, and the size of the page. The concept is that these criteria measure the current fame of the subject. This is then manipulated by other algorithms to compensate for a skewing of data toward more recent subjects, arriving at true likely historical significance. While acknowledging the bias against non-Western figures and disavowing any special authoritativeness, Regarding the relative paucity of women on the list (only three of the top 100 figures are women), the authors point out past barriers to women assuming historically significant roles. However, critics have also postulated a bias in the underlying data source, and in fact Skiena notes that, statistically speaking, in order to gain a Wikipedia entry a woman has to be somewhat more accomplished than a man. Skiena stated: "Our methods show that for historical figures from the past 300 years, the average significance of women appearing in Wikipedia was substantially greater than that of the average man. This implies that women required greater credentials to get into Wikipedia, analogous to being about 4 IQ points smarter in the mean. Fortunately, this significance gap has closed and essentially eliminated in modern times." ==See also==