[HN Gopher] Map showing birthplaces of "notable people" around t...
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Map showing birthplaces of "notable people" around the world
Author : jbesomi
Score : 838 points
Date : 2022-07-29 07:32 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tjukanovt.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (tjukanovt.github.io)
| bthrn wrote:
| Some of this doesn't seem correct? For example, I was surprised
| to see that Ken Jeong was Canadian (shown up and to the right of
| Michael J Fox, in what looks like Northern Saskatchewan). But I
| looked it up and he was born in Detroit.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Caught that too. George Washington is showing up in PA
| vmladenov wrote:
| It is quite amusing to see Prince Phillip under the leadership
| section covering Greece and part of Italy while someone like
| Vasil Levski is omitted.
| teekert wrote:
| Very nice, I'm missing the city names though :)
|
| Crazy how little women there are, it's like for our entire
| recorded history we have been ignoring 50% of our potential.
| Let's hope it gets a lot more mixed!
| j7ake wrote:
| They weren't ignored. For most of recorded history the basic
| unit was the family.
|
| The men were in charge of public affairs of the family, while
| women were in charge of private and domestic affairs.
|
| It was only recently the basic unit has been further subdivided
| into individuals, which required many to rely on institutional
| support on matters that used to be within the family, eg
| education, pensions, restaurants, clothing shops, apartment
| complexes, birth control.
|
| The truly ignored throughout history were the peasants and
| serfs. Most men of significance were from aristocratic or upper
| class upbringings.
|
| The divide is not between men and women, but haves vs have
| nots.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Thank you for having a nuanced take beyond just the notion of
| groups being surpressed.
| mxkopy wrote:
| daptaq wrote:
| > Honestly this comment was a very long winded way of
| saying "women aren't oppressed"
|
| Important discussions ought to have more nuance than a
| assigning a binary value of being oppressed or not. One
| step towards this direction will have to be to abandon the
| notion that you can say X is "more oppressed" than Y,
| especially when talking about different categories,
| societies and historical periods. There is nothing to be
| gained from these comparisons, except for infighting and
| wasting opportunities to improve one's understanding of the
| issues that are being dealt with.
| mxkopy wrote:
| This isn't a nuanced important discussion rife with
| opportunities to learn or some such BS
|
| If the conversation was about how this map doesn't have a
| lot of women on it, how open and nuanced are you being
| when the first thing you say is "women aren't being
| ignored"?
|
| Talk about assigning binary values. I'm not the one
| denying anything. I'm just pointing our the non sequitur
| zarzavat wrote:
| They are saying that you have to look at the past from
| the perspective of the people who lived in the past, and
| not from the perspective of the present.
|
| While from your perspective as someone living in an
| individualist culture in 2022 there are few women,
| someone in the past would not have perceived it from that
| viewpoint as modern individualism had not yet been
| developed.
|
| The history of our culture and in fact all of humanity is
| the history of kin groups, that then developed into
| families, then into individualism (in some places).
| meesles wrote:
| If you look at the past from the perspective of the
| people who lived in in, then it's plain fact that many
| cultures oppressed women and that women were often seen
| as less strong, able, smart, etc. which led to reduced
| opportunities for whatever education existed at the time,
| learning specialized skills, or ability to hold positions
| of power.
|
| All of these circumstances existed because of how people
| in the past thought and acted. This has a direct impact
| on the map we're looking at, which has mostly famous men.
| Men who had education, learned specialized skills,
| ascended to positions of power, etc.
|
| So again like GP said, it's a bad-faith argument to try
| and shift to talking about class issues when the original
| point was simply about the gender inequality. They are
| different issues.
| j7ake wrote:
| The life of women in the upper class were objectively
| better than the male serfs.
|
| The major form of oppression back then was by class, then
| by gender.
|
| It is of course better to be a male aristocrat than a
| female aristocrat (measured from today's individualism
| values ie domestic duties have zero value), but both lived
| vastly better lives than serfs. Being a lower class woman
| was an extremely oppressed state, illustrated vividly by
| books from Victor Hugo.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Nobody is arguing that being rich doesn't entail
| privelege. So why are you pointing that out? What purpose
| does it serve other than to distract from the original
| statement?
|
| To that point I'll not get distracted.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
|
| Did you know that the world's first programmer was a
| woman? She published the first algorithm for the
| Analytical Engine.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think Ada Lovelace is actually the perfect example of
| what the OP is talking about. There are fewer famous
| women in history because women were given less
| opportunity to excel (and sometimes had achievements they
| did make stifled or their contribution hidden). Ada
| Lovelace was both an extraordinary person, and in a very
| privileged position. Had she just been extraordinary, she
| wouldn't have had the tools to leverage her abilities.
| Her pedigree and circumstances allowed her access to the
| private education and social circle that allowed her to
| apply her abilities and excel. The issue is that so fewer
| women were ever given the opportunity to excel, and that
| still remains the case!
|
| I felt this was an interesting article about how women
| were stripped of the opportunities to get into software
| in the 80s to much the same effect as likely many women
| were stripped of their opportunities during Ada's time: h
| ttps://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/wh
| en...
| [deleted]
| carschno wrote:
| You might want to look into intersectionality:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
|
| > Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat
| each axis of oppression in isolation.
|
| Edit: I am not saying that explains all the complexity,
| and there has been a lot of criticism, justified or not.
| However, it is at least a good starting point.
| [deleted]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Being a lower class woman was an extremely oppressed
| state, illustrated vividly by books from Victor Hugo.
|
| This is true, but also read The Road To Wigan Pier to see
| the lives of lower class men in England. Go to work,
| crawl 2 miles underground (unpaid) to get to your work
| site, work for hours in a small space mining coal, crawl
| back, get home, scrub off as best you can, eat, sleep,
| repeat. Almost nothing that wasn't either a crime or
| being sent to war was as bad as that nightmare of a life.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's not really fair to put words into people's mouths like
| that. It's a pithy thing to do in places like reddit to get
| laughs and "gotcha" moments but I think HN prefers to give
| people the chance to explain themselves, and the benefit of
| the doubt.
|
| If you think that's what they believe, then if you ask
| questions instead you give them the opportunity to explain
| it better. When you tell someone what they're saying rather
| than letting them say it, they have to spend time defending
| themselves against things they never said.
| mxkopy wrote:
| When, as a reaction to the simple statement that there
| are less women on this map than there could be, someone
| says "[women] aren't being ignored, poor people are being
| ignored", I don't need to assume good faith in that
| individual. The goal of downplaying doesn't have to be
| stated to be obvious.
|
| If they wanted open and constructive discussion, they
| shouldn't start out with a destructive statement.
|
| Your apologetics are frankly worrying. If you really
| think lines of reasoning that downplay the importance of
| taking note of women and shoehorn male victimhood into
| those discussions should be given a chance to breathe, I
| don't think we can have a productive conversation.
| ehnto wrote:
| > When, as a reaction to the simple statement that there
| are less women on this map than there could be, someone
| says "[women] aren't being ignored, poor people are being
| ignored", I don't need to assume good faith in that
| individual. The goal of downplaying doesn't have to be
| stated to be obvious.
|
| Fair enough, I'm not going to argue too hard on that
| matter since I do agree with your original statement that
| there could be more women on the map.
|
| > Your apologetics are frankly worrying. If you really
| think lines of reasoning that downplay the importance of
| taking note of women and shoehorn male victimhood into
| those discussions, I don't think we can have a productive
| conversation.
|
| You're assuming a position I don't have. I was pointing
| out that your discussion style is counter-productive,
| that doesn't mean I side with the other commenter, or
| yourself. But since your point wasn't to engage in
| discussion, I guess it doesn't matter.
| mxkopy wrote:
| It's fair to say I was being counter-productive. But I
| think everything has its place. Some things are better
| off not produced.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| If everything has its place, then how can some things be
| better to not be produced?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| you say this as a linear progression, but you're only paying
| attention to certain written histories and ignoring a lot of
| anthro/archaelogical research of (large-scale post discovery
| of agriculture societies) cases where it was otherwise
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Fame is such a bizarre and frankly perplexing concept. It
| does not equate to achievement, to competence or success per
| se. It says nothing of the goodness or value of a person, the
| wealth they created, the families they raised, the hearts
| they broke, and very little of the suffering and joy they
| experienced as actual people. It's an ever-fading trace left
| in the (mostly) written records of institutions, where the
| narrow spotlight of social consciousness shone at some time.
|
| What I find most interesting as I explore history and
| civilisation is the marginal web that supports what is
| "notable". Almost every breakthough has a "revisionist"
| version of someone else who made a simultaneous advance. Or
| allegedly had the limelight stolen from them. Every Crick and
| Watson have their Rosalind Franklin. For every Charles
| Babbage and Alan Turing there's an Ada Lovelace or Mavis
| Batey. And yet those are at least "noted". Who and what lies
| behind those figures in the third and fourth rows of
| history's group photograph, "fame"?
| j7ake wrote:
| When people used to live in small villages and interacted
| with no more than 50-100 people in a life time, what was
| valued is completely different from what is valued today.
|
| Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what matters
| is first impressions, "clout"/fame, and standing above the
| crowd.
|
| In today's society we no longer value things like domestic
| affairs, honor, integrity, and humbleness. Now we try to
| maximise visibility, fame, and brand.
|
| There is probably a huge forgotten mass of people who
| humbly did their work, improved their local communities as
| they needed, and raised the next generation. Those who
| specifically seek fame will easily outcompete these humble
| people.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what
| matters is first impressions, "clout"/fame, and standing
| above the crowd.
|
| I think you're right about all those things J7ke. Values
| have really shifted. Yet that still leaves strange
| unanswered questions that puzzle me.
|
| Most all of the intelligent people I know are deeply
| unhappy about it. And I've worked with a good few
| "famous" people. They were all unhappy too. Now we're all
| older, and great levellers like health, children and life
| fulfilment have come into play those that survived (drugs
| and more money than they could handle) are happier being
| "nobody" again (or at least getting recognised
| occasionally on the bus by strangers who say "Didn't you
| used to be...?"). I actually think many who were
| "successful" and had their 15 minutes feel tricked. Even
| though they "made it", in the sense of "Being there",
| they were never _there_. The cake was a lie.
|
| By contrast, my father and grandfather's generation lived
| through awful, awful times, in wars, rationing, brothers
| and sisters died, and they were certainly never "on" the
| TV or Internet. If they had recognition it was a medal
| and a parade. However they seemed to go to their graves
| with a sense of having _lived_.
|
| What does it mean then, when we talk about "what
| matters"?
|
| Is "what matters" a cruel trick and illusion? Perhaps a
| way to rob us of the ordinary well-lived life that really
| does matter?
| jedberg wrote:
| Look in areas that were settled more recently, like the US west
| coast, and you'll find more women.
|
| But definitely not 50%.
| wisty wrote:
| Maybe society doesn't have high enough expectations of women.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Or maybe _men_ don 't have high expectations of women, or
| because they benefit from women having a subservient
| position, aren't very inclined to change society.
| jmfayard wrote:
| Gender Content bias is a systemic thing
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia
| arethuza wrote:
| I went looking to see who the entry was for the nearest town to
| where I live expecting it to be Mary Somerville and was rather
| disappointed to find it was some chap I'd never heard of.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville
|
| Worth noting:
|
| _" In 1834 she became the first person to be described in
| print as a 'scientist'"_
| jefftk wrote:
| That's what the term was coined for; the older term was "man
| of science"
| macintux wrote:
| You can toggle between people and location names on the left.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Crazy how people think we have been only ignoring 50% of our
| potential when we were ignoring like 95%.
| hackernewds wrote:
| I don't understand
| teekert wrote:
| I'd guess the 5% is some form of privileged elite. I see
| that.
| input_sh wrote:
| To quote Stephen Jay Gould:
|
| > I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and
| convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near
| certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died
| in cotton fields and sweatshops.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Einstein had to flee his country to save his life. From
| the "Encyclopedia Britannica":
|
| > In December 1932 Einstein decided to leave Germany
| forever (he would never go back). It became obvious to
| Einstein that his life was in danger. A Nazi organization
| published a magazine with Einstein's picture and the
| caption "Not Yet Hanged" on the cover. There was even a
| price on his head.
|
| He certainly had an uphill struggle and wasn't simply
| handed everything because of some innate privilege.
| eevilspock wrote:
| But without the enticement of membership in the elite,
| with a greater share of society's wealth, power and
| privileges, no one would bother working hard to become
| doctors, lawyers, software developers and CEOs. We need a
| stratified society to have all these things the modern
| world gives us. It is only the desire to escape the
| cotton fields and sweatshops that spurs people to work.
| It is the only reason that our world has seen amazing
| advancements in science, technology and business.
| Capitalism depends on inequality, and we depend on
| capitalism.
|
| This is logic of capitalism. This is our society's
| justification for incredible differences in pay and
| wealth.
| marosgrego wrote:
| What? One become a scientist because they are interested
| in things, or a doctor because they want to help people.
| eevilspock wrote:
| I was being rhetorical, echoing back SV's/tech's dominant
| ideology. For what I really think, see my replies to
| these threads:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10793226
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659455
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14282791
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10451733
| eesmith wrote:
| > It is only the desire to escape the cotton fields and
| sweatshops that spurs people to work.
|
| Why do rich people work?
|
| They don't need to escape the cotton fields and
| sweatshops.
|
| Slaves worked the American cotton fields - why did they
| work with no chance of membership in the elite?
|
| I'm pretty sure people in 1860 justified slavery with the
| same argument "It is the only reason that our world has
| seen amazing advancements in science, technology and
| business."
| Aidevah wrote:
| If you look at the list for the most famous people of all
| time, and especially for men[1], a large majority seem to
| have originated (and even remained all their life)
| outside what most people would consider the "privileged
| elite". Notably absent are some of the wealthiest
| individuals of all time, Crassus, Jakob Fugger, Andrew
| Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller.
|
| Of course, it doesn't disprove being born in favourable
| circumstances can and will affect your quality of life.
| But this list seems largely indifferent to how much money
| or power daddy has.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4/ta
| bles/3
| DocTomoe wrote:
| How many potential geniuses ended up herding yaks, or
| becoming chemical process workers, or died in some
| pointless war as cannon fodder, or in some hospital due to
| substandard care?
|
| Potential is cheap and abundant. Using it is what changes
| the world.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Using it is what changes the world.
|
| Being _recognized for it_ is what changes the world.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Recognition is overvalued: It's nice for the individual
| who receives it, but it comes after the fact and is
| ultimately neglectable.
|
| Virtually no-one knows who came up with the paperclip
| (Johan Vaaler), and still it is one of the world-changing
| inventions.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not recognition with regard to fame, recognition with
| regard to your peers in the field.
| davidguetta wrote:
| Basically economic factors are a way bigger source of
| discrimination than gender will even be.
|
| Way harder to fix because no one wants to do affirmative
| action for young boys born in trailer parks.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Yes, I would much rather be a rich woman than a poor man.
| But I'd rather be a poor man than a poor woman. I'd
| rather be a poor white man than a poor black man. I'd
| rather be a poor black man than a poor black woman.
|
| I don't think it helps to have a contest about which
| forms of discrimination are more impactful, because they
| all add up.
|
| Gender, race, social class, within which nation's borders
| one is born... they all add up, and it gets worse if you
| "lose" in more than one category.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
|
| But there are cases when the comparison should be made,
| and I hint at it in my first sentence. We do spend more
| effort on gender equality than racial equality because,
| frankly, white women have more power and value in our
| society than black men or women. For example the #MeToo
| movement was triggered and driven by the injustices done
| to powerful, privileged white women.
|
| Sadly, social justice is driven too often by self-serving
| interests rather than social justice itself.
| davidguetta wrote:
| Intersectionality a soooo american because it's like your
| whole society is so much about fighthing for you own
| class / race / gender AGAINST the other that someone had
| to make a new word recently to explain what European
| nations have defined by "universality" in their
| constitutions for centuries.
|
| For example in france there was a real movement to make
| school accessible for "every citizen regarding of race,
| gender and class" during the 3rd republic. But still the
| new trend now in america is to promote "black-only
| school". WTF.
|
| Sorry for trolling especially since we don't disagree but
| sometimes reading american forums is a constant facepalms
| i just cant' help.
| kuboble wrote:
| >I don't think it helps to have a contest about which
| forms of discrimination are more impactful, because they
| all add up.
|
| But it often seems like some are easily overlooked. When
| I was born into a poor working family in Poland, my
| father's monthly salary was worth 15$.
|
| When I was studying I had to carefully plan things like
| bread in my budget, and I was eating with homeless people
| regularly. Yet, I have preserved, got a job as a
| programmer and life has been relatively easy from that
| point.
|
| On the grand scale of things I consider myself lucky. But
| it's tilting when I hear German doctor raised in upper
| middle class loudly complaining about how underprivilaged
| she is compared to me because I'm a man.
| [deleted]
| mxkopy wrote:
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| This is a conversation and people are allowed to bring
| their knowledge, experience and opinions to the table.
| This thread started from a map showing the apparent
| locations of famous persons' birthplaces. I don't see how
| its any less relevant to steer the conversation towards
| economic inequality than it is towards gender inequality.
|
| If you'd rather talk about "children in trailer parks",
| then go ahead - it's the same point.
| mxkopy wrote:
| No, "boys in trailer parks" is decidedly not the same
| point as women being ignored.
|
| The fact that they are both equally relevant makes it
| utterly stupid that they are being talked about in the
| same place. If a separate top level comment were made
| about how poor people aren't on the map then I wouldn't
| be arguing that. But as a reply to a point about how
| women aren't on the map, you aren't doing much other than
| making it about men, by talking about how some men aren't
| on the map either. It's some "all lives matter" bullshit
| and should be recognized as such.
| davidguetta wrote:
| > If a separate top level comment were made about how
| poor people aren't on the map then I wouldn't be arguing
| that.
|
| Well that's precisely one of the point I was making: that
| people only care more about VISIBLE inequalities (the
| gender) which are, in my opinion which you can disagree
| with, a lower factor of actual inequalities in societies.
|
| At the end of the day I'm not the one who brought
| "inequalities for women" about a cool map which had a
| priori no political message. Everyone is free to make
| their own point of discussion, and you didn't jump out of
| your seat when this first point about women was made to
| say it was out of context as you are doing now.
|
| And as a french person it's insane that your culture is
| so confrontational and tribal that "all lives matters"
| has to be a divisive statement. Hope you guys will heal
| at some point.
| seneca wrote:
| As the person responding to you said, this is a
| conversation. It's not here for you to dictate the proper
| direction of. It's for people who are curious to share
| ideas back and forth. I personally find the responses
| significantly more interesting that your insults. If you
| are only interested in shutting down conversations that
| don't fit your preferred narrative, perhaps you are the
| problem.
| [deleted]
| davidguetta wrote:
| Don't worry Ill allow you to replace "boys in trailer
| parks" by "humans in trailer parks" in my argument if you
| want to go make the EXACT SAME POINT somewhere else.
| ok123456 wrote:
| There's a radio button to show the city/country names instead
| on the left hand side.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| There is an option in the top left that allows you to show city
| names. Unfortunately, you cannot see the city names and the
| people names at the same time.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >it's like for our entire recorded history we have been
| ignoring 50% of our potential. Let's hope it gets a lot more
| mixed!
|
| I'm so sick of shit like this. It's so intellectually
| offensive, I can't be polite any longer.
|
| It's so incredibly rude to dismiss so many great women just
| because you didn't hear about them, as if being famous is the
| ultimate test of potential. As if being a famous author or
| famous SOMETHING is the ultimate goal in this life.
|
| I'll use my mother as an example. She's a truly great woman.
| She'll never be famous to you (she has no such vain desires
| anyway), but she's a great human being, much greater than
| you'll ever be, for she rejects DEMOGRAPHIC quotas, she's
| honest, and compassionate, and pious, and loving, and fun, and
| courageous, and every day she lives up to her potential and
| more, and she inspires her family and friends to do the same.
| She does what she does and she loves doing it and she does it
| well.
|
| And how willfully ignorant it is to ignore the different powers
| and motivations unique to men and to women.
|
| If you think there's a problem with so few famous women, then
| that's a personal problem, that's a _you_ problem. _You_ are
| the problem, because _you_ are imposing your own personal
| beliefs and personal standards onto women.
| telesilla wrote:
| You can help:
|
| https://ideas.ted.com/you-can-help-fix-wikipedias-gender-imb...
|
| https://www.wikiloveswomen.org/
|
| There must be other initiatives if others have links to share
| in this thread.
| [deleted]
| systemz wrote:
| You can enable city names in left upper corner with "Show real
| place names" option
| downboots wrote:
| > it's like we have been ignoring 50% of our potential.
|
| Well, most all had a mom...
| teekert wrote:
| And sisters and daughters... But somehow they never had the
| same opportunities to get on this "Famous People" list. Last
| week I told my Daughter she can be a knight (although granted
| she usually wants to be a princess), and I felt weird and
| then I felt extra weird.
| downboots wrote:
| I think we agree a lot of good work goes unrecognized. Just
| pointing out no one works truly alone.
|
| Off topic: I imagine parenting must feel extra weird. :)
| idkwhoiam wrote:
| > she can be a knight She cannot unless you mean cosplay.
| downboots wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc
| tokai wrote:
| She was never knighted.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Current estimates are that around 100 billion people have ever
| lived. So that's a lot more than 50% that have been "ignored".
|
| It turns out that if you look for notability or exceptional
| attributes you will get mostly men. This is due to biology and
| essentially the whole reason males and sexual reproduction
| exists.
|
| This doesn't mean that being male will give you a better chance
| of being exceptional or notable, though. Quite the opposite, in
| fact. The bar is lower for women because simply being a woman
| is considered notable precisely because there are so few
| notable women.
| outadoc wrote:
| For my birthplace in France, mostly only names I've never heard
| of. Would be nice to be able to filter by time period.
| 75central wrote:
| Another weird data oddity...it's show Jake Gyllenhall as being
| born in Los Angeles, Texas, but he's actually from Los Angeles,
| California.
| badrabbit wrote:
| There are people from Antarctica??
| nemo1618 wrote:
| I checked all of them, and none seem to have actually been born
| in Antarctica :(
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Hell yes they got Eminem right.
|
| No one believes he's from Joe town.
| yummybear wrote:
| Wildly incorrect in my region at least. Seems like one of the
| sources is sports databases, as most are (to me) completely
| unknown soccer players.
| martincmartin wrote:
| The source seems to be Wikipedia.
| liuguangyuan wrote:
| lordnacho wrote:
| Wow this is amazing. A lot of places are known for a mid-level
| pro soccer player that you're unlikely to have heard of, unless
| you are very into it.
|
| How does it know when it's appropriate to cut the dataset a
| little bit finer? I'm amazed how appropriate the names are that
| it turns up.
| [deleted]
| intrasight wrote:
| famous == celebrity here
|
| It would be nice if you could select type of fame, since it's
| listed that way in Wikipedia
| tester756 wrote:
| Jan Czochralski
|
| Notability rank: 78172.5
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Czochralski
|
| wow, very low
| hackernewds wrote:
| Justly so
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| Looking at the data - these locations are based on where they
| were born (not where they currently reside, or died).
| Angostura wrote:
| It does say that at the top, but I too was initially confused
| as to why Charles Darwin was in Shrewsberry, rather than the
| place he lived for most of his adult life - the very splendid
| Down House https://www.english-
| heritage.org.uk/visit/places/home-of-cha...
| ask_b123 wrote:
| I didn't know Frida Kahlo was the most famous mexican, but I
| guess some famous mexicans I'd have thought of (say, Benito
| Juarez) are mostly famous locally and not globally. EDIT: their
| rank difference is huge, 156 vs 1733.
| chalcolithic wrote:
| I absolutely love it. So interesting to find out that the mayor
| of Kyiv was born pretty close to where I am now. Do you have any
| plans on monetizing it?
| chazeon wrote:
| Most part of Asian is covered by political figures while US is
| covered by artists.
| 4cao wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "Asia" I guess but in the part I've
| looked at, not really. For Taiwan the largest names are Ang Lee
| (film director), Teresa Teng (singer), Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai
| (also singers). For HK, the actor Jackie Chan trumps anybody
| else. Hayao Miyazaki (animator) is one of the most prominent in
| Japan. And in South Korea around Seoul, there's Psy and a
| couple of other artists as well.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Very cool project. So onto the nitpicking! I couldn't find Diego
| Maradona in Argentina. It does list Lionel Messi, though.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| ah! I was actually confused to find Maradona at the north of
| Colombia for some reason. The source dataset seems correct so
| something must have gone wrong with the map
| wicket wrote:
| I think they got El Pibe de Oro mixed up with Carlos "El
| Pibe" Valderrama, who astonishingly doesn't appear in Santa
| Marta or anywhere in Colombia.
| lief79 wrote:
| Well, Cullen Eddy from Hidden Valley is certainly in the wrong
| county of pennslyvania.
| deltree7 wrote:
| The most garbage map that I've ever seen.
|
| Mumbai has 20 famous people (most of them I've never heard of)
| while missing hundreds of famous people.
| wink wrote:
| Cool idea, the main problem I saw when clicking around is that
| the granularity of people's place of birth (all via wikipedia) is
| not consistent. Like, one person has my city listed, so this
| person "owns" the entry for the city, but 10 other people have
| parts of the city listed (so their wikipedia entry is more
| correct), so they're listed for that part of town, be it an
| official part or not. For some people a specific building is
| known (usually not a hospital), so they "only" own this building.
| It's a bit weird.
| throwaway2016a wrote:
| I noticed the same thing. Boston, for instance has a ton of
| people in individual neighborhoods but smaller cities have one
| person representing the whole city.
|
| Also, it relies on birth location. So someone who, say, left a
| city and moved at age 5 will be associated with the city they
| only lived in for 5 years not the one they spent their
| formatives years in.
|
| Still a fun experiment, though.
| obert wrote:
| strong proof that north and south pole births lead to a career in
| politics :-)
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| No one was ever born at either pole.
| kull wrote:
| it frozen my browser
| aerodog wrote:
| Small algorithmic feedback: George Washington was located to the
| wrong Westmoreland County! (He's from VA, not PA)
| nurgasemetey wrote:
| This app is using Wikidata and actually you can change it.
| abiloe wrote:
| yoda97 wrote:
| Apparently my hometown is famous for a french clothes designer
| born during the colonial era.
| CPLX wrote:
| George Washington wasn't born in Pennsylvania.
| obert wrote:
| would be interesting/cool having a similar map for parents of
| famous people
| yakubin wrote:
| I couldn't find Maxwell, which is weird since Maxwell is present
| in the source CSV. He should be placed somewhere in Edinburgh.
|
| Fantastic site nonetheless.
| tcmb wrote:
| Seems to be eclipsed by Sean Connery, also from Edinburgh.
| rchard2scout wrote:
| That's because both Sean Connery and Maxwell have their
| birthplace as just "Edinburgh", and Connery's notability rank
| is 261, while Maxwell's is 683. So Connery is shown instead of
| Maxwell.
| Orkocom wrote:
| i love that site ;) ty for posting
| velopert wrote:
| Wow this page is awesome
| erkanerol wrote:
| ---deleted---
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Not to go all Godwin, but Hitler is right there in Austria,
| visible from the farthest level of zoom.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| Hitler is also on the map. "Famous" isn't the word used on the
| webpage - that can sometimes mean "celebrated". The word they
| use is "notable", which is perhaps more appropriate when
| talking about people who have committed heinous acts.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Hitler might be the most (in)famous person ever to have lived
| and so much so that his name has become a synonym for evil
| (colloquially). There is a reason that every page on
| Wikipedia is 6 clicks away from his article.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| It's a cool map, now i would really want to play. If i could
| color code the names by birthdate it would be possible to get a
| great new insight in regional relevance over time. Also switching
| between current residence and birth place would be very
| interesting as well as color coding the distance between birth
| and current residence to see where attractive places are or how
| much of a role to become famous the embedding from birth would
| be.
| swyx wrote:
| is there a way to extract the sorted list of people by fame? how
| was the fame list decided?
| RLN wrote:
| This seems a little inaccurate. I've found John Pearse for my
| hometown in Hook, Hampshire. However Wikipedia indicates he's
| from Hook in Yorkshire.
|
| I imagine this could be repeated quite often as there are so many
| reused place names. Hook in Yorkshire doesn't even get a look in
| on this map!
| m0rissette wrote:
| Is this just for city in world; do people =
| lookupNotableOnWikipediaForCity(city); for person in people; do
| rank = rankPeople(person); storeRank(rank, person, city); done;
| done
|
| With some obvious logic behind the ranking algorithm?
| midasuni wrote:
| It looks more like for each (top X notable people) print on map
| with location, and as you zoom out make the less notable people
| fade out
| eterevsky wrote:
| Why is the most famous person born in St. Petersburg Ayn Rand and
| not say Putin?
| scottwmaxwell wrote:
| This is really fun! I even shared it with my family.
|
| Please ignore the others who just fucking HAD to make it about
| race or gender or whatever.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| why the FUCK did you use white text on a white globe?
| [deleted]
| sgt wrote:
| Looks blue to me.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| Nope, white as fuck: https://imgur.com/a/aXLg5Yg
| yreg wrote:
| I give you that :D
|
| It's just a bug, not a design decision.
| yreg wrote:
| The globe is blue...?
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| nope
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| This is really cool
| mkovach wrote:
| I wonder what they mean by "notable". Notable folks from my town
| include announcers for major sports teams, a famous cartoonist, a
| former director of an international organization, and a Grammy
| winning musician (among others).
|
| The map indicates the "notable" from my town is a playbook
| centerfold that married an football player and wrestled a few
| times, who I had to actually look up.
| [deleted]
| manthedudeguy wrote:
| chunkyguy wrote:
| It says the most famous person in my area was Ronald Ross, but he
| was only born there and left when he was 8. Also nobody in my
| state even knows about him.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Dev feedback: It seems the map can get in this weird state where
| the "focus" is on the horizon rather than the center of the
| globe, and you can no longer rotate it sensibly. Maybe the
| rotations get gimbal locked or something? Fixed by refreshing the
| page. Safari on MacBook Air / trackpad.
| donatj wrote:
| Came here to complain about the data accuracy, but I see I was
| beaten to it.
|
| I'll just add that this has an "interesting" number of people
| born at the north and south poles.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Some surprises when you find people in odd places or don't find
| them where you expect due to them being born somewhere obscure
| far from where they gained their fame. For example the "Greatest
| Canadian" (voted as such in some CBC special) Tommy Douglas does
| not appear in Saskachewan (most famous person here... Wrestler
| Roddy Piper actually) but rather a suburb of Edinburgh. Hey I'm
| learning something!
|
| Would be tricker to compose a map that factors in where they
| lived independent from where they were born .
| rburhum wrote:
| If you showed the "leadership" map you just generated to the
| peruvian people, at least 50% would turn on you...
| ldng wrote:
| All I have got in Firefox is a blue ball.
| tjukanov wrote:
| Creator here. I've restricted the access token for the data to
| only incoming traffic from that specific domain
| (tjukanovt.github.io), so maybe Firefox is doing something
| weird there. As if you can't access the tileset, you only get
| that blue ball.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The Planet is a blue ball if you point to Eastern Island
| darkwater wrote:
| Works for me with Firefox 102/Linux
| shmde wrote:
| Just like real life.
| tgv wrote:
| Me too: Firefox 103, macOS. And I did turn off uBlock Origin.
| erkanerol wrote:
| It seems "cities of the most famous people" instead of "most
| famous people from every city" to me.
| matsemann wrote:
| Lots of surprises (to me) scrolling around. J.R.R.Tolkien and
| Freddie Mercury from Africa. George Orwell and Cliff Richard from
| India. Some wrongs, though. I see JP Sartre in South America, but
| the link says Paris.
| astura wrote:
| >George Orwell and Cliff Richard from India.
|
| Important to note it was British India at the time both were
| born.
| ivanstame wrote:
| So Nikola Tesla was not notable enough? Or I just can't find it
| in Serbia or the US.
| selectnull wrote:
| Because he was not born in neither Serbia or the US.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| It's about birth places and he was born in the Austrian Empire,
| if you check Central Europe you find him right there.
| macintux wrote:
| Croatia.
|
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9036
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Tesla was born in modern-day Croatia. He's listed there.
| eesmith wrote:
| I didn't understand the methodology. Turns out it's because my
| first data point was the result of an error in the source data.
|
| I looked at Santa Fe, since I thought George R. R. Martin would
| be the most famous person there.
|
| This says Anna Gunn is the most famous person from Santa Fe.
|
| Okay, so perhaps Martin's a transplant, while Gunn was born
| there? The map legend says "birthplaces", after all.
|
| Nope. At least, Wikipedia and IMDB says she was born in
| Cleveland, and her family moved to Santa Fe when she was young.
|
| Though ... other sources say she was born in Santa Fe, like
| https://patch.com/new-mexico/albuquerque/3-celebrities-who-l... ?
|
| But the source paper at
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4 uses Wikipedia
| and Wikidata - both of which list Cleveland.
|
| ... Ah-ah! The place of birth entry for Wikidata changed on 3
| August 2020 from Cleveland to Santa Fe.
| https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q271050&oldid=124...
|
| And the Wikipedia entry changed on 31 August 2018
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anna_Gunn&diff=86...
|
| And the data from the paper was from 2018.
|
| I wonder how bad the data is in the rest of the data set.
| Lerc wrote:
| A curious factor in this map is that to stop overlapping text,
| names are not shown if higher ranked names are nearby.
|
| Peter Jackson at with respectable 'top 1000' score of 656 doesn't
| appear because he was born too close to Ernest Rutherford who
| edges him out at 634.
|
| Andrew Niccol, who's films are somewhat more niche, gets on the
| map by virtue of being born a few kilometers north of Jackson.
| whiterock wrote:
| There are some errors I think - According to wikidata & wikipedia
| the famous Diego Maradonna is not born in Colombia but Argentina.
| It strikes me as worrysome since this is such a famous person -
| I'd rather expect such errors for less famous persons, right?
| darkwater wrote:
| So, Leonardo Da Vinci is #3, Hitler #4, I cannot find #1 and #2.
| selectnull wrote:
| Barack Obama is #1. Trump is #2 :)
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Trump is 2. Haven't found 1 yet
| mywittyname wrote:
| Explore the Pacific
| kordlessagain wrote:
| I always fancied saying to Brad Pitt when I see him, "Ever go to
| Bea Brittons and play songs on the table's jukebox?". He grew up
| in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
|
| I spent a lot of time searching and playing songs on the jukebox
| there, which had all these little remote units for selecting
| songs on each table. I still wonder what the network for that
| looked like.
| teledyn wrote:
| "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen people"
| (Momus, 1991)
|
| http://imomus.com/index499.html
| booboofixer wrote:
| When i see young people around me share this with enthusiasm
| despite the environment that's been created mostly because of
| social media, I can't help but think if this was meant to be a
| warning.
| mdemare wrote:
| Very cool map!
|
| Huge recency bias though, with Obama and Trump on 1 and 2.
|
| I wonder what the map would look like if you multiplied
| everyone's score with the number of people born in the same
| decade, and divided by the total score of people born in the same
| decade.
| ehnto wrote:
| I suppose this is actually representing the most famous people in
| the -western world's lens- rather than the most famous people to
| each country respectively. For example, Haruki Murakami is a
| Japanese author, very famous in the west because their books have
| been translated into English. But would they be the most famous
| person from Kyoto to people in Japan?
|
| That's something that's always fascinated me about the internet,
| it's essentially delineated by language and not country. If you
| google things in Spanish, you get the spanish web. If you google
| things in Japanese, you get the Japanese web. For a subtle
| example of this, there's very little crossover between Japanese
| memes and English memes, it's a whole different web. Japanese web
| design is also famously different to western web design, it's
| formed it's own set of UX expectations and principles.
| newyankee wrote:
| Salman Rushdie is the most popular person in Mumbai by this
| standard, a good bet for Indians would be Sachin Tendulkar born
| in Mumbai
| mynameishere wrote:
| I had no idea who this was but I guessed cricketer. I guessed
| right. Seems like Westerners have better taste in Mumbai-ites
| than Indians do. I mean--noted author vs. guy who excels at
| weird ball 'n stick game.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| As soon as I saw Leonardo DaVinci and Picasso for Italy and
| France, I knew this was going to be the western lens, haha.
| Would be interesting to select the country as a point of
| reference.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| France and Italy are "Western" countries.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Do you think people from Asia would have a different
| perspective on who the most famous Italian and/or French
| people are?
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I've never been to Asia, but if I had to make a bet on it,
| I'd say yes, they probably do have a different perspective
| on it.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Which Italians do you think are likely to be more famous
| in Asia than Leonardo DaVinci?
| tremendo wrote:
| Picasso was from Spain, so is it then the most famous from?
| or in? a Country
| tremendo wrote:
| From what I can see it's most famous IN that area, not
| "from". Looking in Australia I see a lot of not-
| australians.
| asveikau wrote:
| Picasso was from Malaga in the south of Spain and that is
| where he shows up on the map for me. Commenter perhaps
| mistook Spain for France.
| sgustard wrote:
| DaVinci, Picasso & other western artists also score highest
| on the list of most expensive paintings. Would you consider
| an economic view to be a more balanced measure of fame? Many
| of the buyers are Middle Eastern or Asian too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintin.
| ..
| d883kd8 wrote:
| Do you not know the gender of Haruki Murakami, or are you just
| misgendering a man?
| ehnto wrote:
| I didn't specify a gender at all, not out of some
| intentionality, that was just the most natural way for me to
| write that sentence. So I'm not sure what you're talking
| about frankly.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| This site is promoting a rather selective set of "famous
| scientists".
|
| For example, in countries bordering Russia, science nobel
| laureates are missing, but racist pseudoscientists and UFO
| theorists are listed.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > For example, in countries bordering Russia, science nobel
| laureates are missing, but racist pseudoscientists and UFO
| theorists are listed.
|
| Maybe those pseudoscientists and UFO theorists are more "well
| known" than the Nobel laureates? Also, these are not
| opposites: there are various examples of Nobel laureates that
| later became pseudoscientists (see Luc Montagnier [1]).
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier#Controversies
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| "Pseudoscientist" in those cases just means they came to
| disagree with the current dogma. See also people like Kary
| Mullis or John Ioannidis.
|
| You can't have done real science at one point and then
| retroactively be declared a non-scientist by people who in
| many cases couldn't solve a simple equation, let alone
| conduct the research those people did. Mullis' case is
| especially ironic, I've heard him called a "conspiracy
| theorist" by people who use his invention on a daily basis.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| it's representing the most famous people in wikepedia and
| wikidata for 7 languages. The detail are here
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4#Sec1
| 9dev wrote:
| While it's good to have the appropriate facts, that is only
| tangential to OPs point...
| duckmysick wrote:
| Ok, how about this: scrape Wikipedia in multiple languages,
| combine the notability data, and assign weights to
| appropriate locations. For example notability in Japanese
| Wikipedia would have more weight in locations where they
| speak Japanese.
|
| Yes, I realize location != language and it would get tricky
| in locations with multiple languages like Switzerland or
| countries with big diasporas. The dataset would still be
| biased as not all languages have Wikipedia.
|
| It would be a small step into the right direction.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What? It seems directly related to me.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| eh - I vaguely disagree. I think most of the people in the
| US are also off (or at least historically "dated").
|
| Even without looking, I could pretty immediately tell that
| this was wikipedia data, since most of the names are
| "textbook famous".
|
| So really - we're both saying that the word "famous" was
| probably the wrong pick. Should have just said "Map of
| wikipedia's most known people from every city" and then the
| skew is clear.
| influxmoment wrote:
| It's very much western lense. It's what would a foreigner
| know in this part of Asia
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Yes, and for much of the US it's also "What would a
| foreigner know in this part of the US".
|
| Ex: Atlanta is "Martin Luther King Jr". It's a great pick
| if you're going for "internationally recognized". But
| it's not a great pick for "famous" (at least in my
| opinion).
|
| Just off the top of my head, more valid alternatives
| might have been:
|
| - Kanye West
|
| - Spike Lee
|
| - Jeff Foxworthy
|
| - Pat Conroy
|
| - Julia Roberts
| Cd00d wrote:
| Let me know when I can celebrate the federal holiday Jeff
| Foxworthy day and go down to my locality's Kanye West
| Boulevard
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Kanye West does show up for Atlanta if you pick the
| culture filter.
|
| And Julia Roberts wasn't born in Atlanta; she shows up in
| the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, where she was born.
|
| Besides that, though, MLK is certainly more famous than
| anyone you listed. Not even close.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Aren't you agreeing with me here?
|
| You're saying that we should be defining famous as "known
| far and wide" - which is fine, but that makes "what would
| a foreigner recognize" a great fit for the pick.
|
| I'm rebutting the idea that this is limited to non-
| western countries - It's not. If you want a pick who
| people from a location would identify with more as a
| local... this data isn't that: every person on my list is
| in my news much more often than MLK jr.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I agree with what you are saying but you might have
| picked the single worst example for your point I could
| imagine. MLK less famous than Spike Lee? C'mon.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| On the language internet point, it's pretty amazing, yeah. For
| example, all the English youtube niches have Spanish language
| equivalents, and watchers of one are totally unaware that they
| are sitting right next to watchers of another. Like some sort
| of shadowverse.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| A pity that so much language-agnostic material we'll never
| see because search engines and algorithms are so effective at
| this segregation. Translation is good enough for browsing in
| completely unknown languages for internet exploration fun,
| but only one at a time -- still waiting for a practical
| multilingual search engine.
| jericho_jones wrote:
| More likely a search or wiki index.
|
| Eg. Phil Collins isn't shown in favour of a cricketer from the
| early 20th century?
|
| Sometimes things are imperfect, not racist.
| onpensionsterm wrote:
| The word 'racist' didn't appear until your post. It's a shame
| we can't discuss obvious language bias without you becoming
| defensive about imagined sleights.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > It's a shame we can't discuss obvious language bias
| without you becoming defensive about imagined sleights.
|
| Just wait a few years, I feel like this nearly-satanic-
| panic level of sensitivity will pass. Maybe a decade or so.
| wnolens wrote:
| Oh God I can't wait that long. It's so hard to make
| friends in North America right now.
| Stupulous wrote:
| Favoring a Western lens or English language sources _is_
| racist, whether the word was used or not, insofar as it
| favors white people and the people white people care about.
| You might disagree with that definition, but it 's not like
| the commenter above is the first person to use it that way.
| ehnto wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply it was racist, the western world
| contains many races.
| mmmpop wrote:
| I don't see anything in your post dealing with race, so not
| sure what that poster is on about.
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, similarly Dorothea Jordan, 17th century actress, is
| ranked above John O'Shea, premiership footballer, or Thomas
| Francis Meagher, originator of the Irish flag, leader of the
| 1848 young irelanders rebellion against British rule, and
| later US general in the american civil war.
|
| If you're going by contemporary sources, I'd expect O'Shea to
| be on top, if we're including historical sources, I'd expect
| Meagher to be on top, unless Dorothea has some significant
| fame elsewhere than her city of birth
| chmod775 wrote:
| This is also what it felt like to me.
|
| I came back here to write pretty much this comment.
| [deleted]
| Cd00d wrote:
| There's a lot of discussion here of the 'western lens' as you
| bring up, but I'm not sure that's fair criticism. The
| creator(s) aggregated data and built something very
| interesting. To complain that the data they used isn't
| universal doesn't seem fair. I think Wikipedia _is_ a
| reasonable starting place, but yes, Wikipedia skews
| geographically.
|
| All datasets have bias. It's okay to acknowledge that and still
| find insights in the data.
|
| Honestly curious: what highly accessible dataset that allows
| for the simple creations of 'fame metrics' would be better? I'm
| not aware of any.
| ehnto wrote:
| It wasn't a criticism, of course something like this is
| limited by the data available and that's no the fault of the
| author. I was just musing on what might be a side effect of
| using what's available.
|
| There wouldn't be a 'total complete and true set' of data for
| this task, since not all countries use wiki's to the same
| extent, and languages don't actually delineate between
| country (eg: Spanish wikipedia is not exclusively the view of
| people from Spain, nor is English wikipedia exclusively the
| views of people from England).
| Cd00d wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't complaining about your post specifically,
| just a general tenor that kind of shits on this work
| because of an unsolvable problem: as you say there's
| actually no comprehensive dataset that would make it
| possible.
|
| Your original comment was valid and insightful. I replied
| to it because it triggered a lot of secondary criticism
| about sample bias, and those are the comments I was most
| trying to respond to.
| ehnto wrote:
| Ah I see, thanks for the clarification. It's a fair
| defense, this is still definitely an awesome project!
| madcaptenor wrote:
| MLK for Atlanta checks out.
|
| (But then the most famous person from my town is Ryan Seacrest.
| That sounds about right but I don't have to like it.)
| svat wrote:
| This data's definition of "famous" or "notable" is in the
| "Measuring notability" section of the linked paper:
|
| _we build a synthetic notability index using five dimensions to
| figure out a ranking for this broader set of individuals. These
| dimensions are:_
|
| _1. the number of Wikipedia editions of each individual;_ [i.e.
| number of languages in which this person has a Wikipedia article]
|
| _2. the length, i.e total number of words found in all available
| biographies._ [...]
|
| _3. the average number of biography views (hits) for each
| individual between 2015 and 2018 in all available language
| editions_ [...]
|
| _4. the number of non-missing items retrieved from Wikipedia or
| Wikidata for birth date, gender and domain of influence. The
| intuition here is that the more notable the individual, the more
| documented his /her biographies will be;_ [!]
|
| _5. the total number of external links (sources, references,
| etc.) from Wikidata._
|
| _We then determine the quantile values from each dimension and
| add them all to define our notability measure_
|
| They also have a table of what this metric throws up as the most
| "notable" from each time period:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4/tables/3 and
| how the "domain" varies over time:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4/figures/2
| (note Nobility and Religious in 500-1000, to Sports and Culture
| post 1950).
| peterkelly wrote:
| Zoomed into the area around Jerusalem and found the following:
|
| Natalie Portman - notability rank 221
|
| Jesus - notability rank 204.5
|
| Go a bit further north to Haifa, and you'll find Gene Simmons
| with a notability rank of 2136.
| avyfain wrote:
| FWIW, it seems like the ranks are an inverse scale where
| lower means more notable - Jesus is more notable than Natalie
| Portman according to the index.
| peterkelly wrote:
| Ah yes I see it now. She's close though!
|
| John Lennon once famously claimed the Beatles were "More
| popular than Jesus" [1]. His notability index is 27. I
| guess he must have been right.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_popular_than_Jesus
| bobthepanda wrote:
| To be fair, Wikipedia has access to a lot more primary
| and secondary sources for people in the 20th century than
| for people in the first, so I don't know that Wikipedia
| is the best metric.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think Natalie Portman also beats Jesus in terms of her
| Erdos-Bacon number and her H-index
| evan_ wrote:
| She has an Oscar and a couple Golden Globes too, I don't
| think Jesus has won any major film awards
| arthurcolle wrote:
| I mean... not _yet_ - only his biggest fans are aware of
| the ever-imminent return to the forefront of pop culture,
| duh.
| lcuff wrote:
| Thanks so much for digging this out! Very useful to know. So,
| the notability methodology fails massively, as many have noted.
| Jesus and Muhammad trailing Britney Spears by a factor of 4 or
| so is my favorite so far ... LOL. But the question becomes, how
| can the notability be improved. Of course "AI" is probably the
| answer here, in the same way it is becoming the answer to so
| many questions/problems. (Just as the answer to every legal
| question is "it depends".) Two elements pop to mind: (i)
| Accessing more things outside of the Wikipedia/Wikidata
| database. (ii) Within the Wiki world, making associations like
| Jesus ~ Christian ~ bible ~ best selling books.
| saghm wrote:
| > Jesus and Muhammad trailing Britney Spears by a factor of 4
| or so is my favorite so far
|
| To play devil's advocate (edit: pun entirely not intended!),
| I'd bet that way more people today could correctly identify a
| photo of Britney Spears than an accurate rendition of either
| Jesus's or Muhammed's faces. Obviously this map isn't
| supposed to be most "recognizable" people, but I think
| there's something to be said about whether the person itself
| is different from the mythos around them (which may or may
| accurately describe their life).
| merlincorey wrote:
| > an accurate rendition of... Muhammed's faces.
|
| Accurate depictions of Muhammed[0] are difficult to come
| by.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
| saghm wrote:
| Ah, right, I actually had known about that before, but I
| must have forgotten! It would be interesting to see if
| there weren't as much controversy around depicting
| Muhammed whether the common versions today would be
| accurate; depicting Jesus isn't discouraged at all in
| Christianity, but centuries of Europeans depicting him
| looking like them have established a common trope of a
| white, fair-haired Jesus, which would not have been at
| all what he actually looked like given where and when he
| was from. Given that Islam has been much more
| continuously practiced in the region where Muhammed
| lived, I imagine that depictions of him probably wouldn't
| have been as egregiously inaccurate in terms of race,
| although it's possible other sorts of cultural
| expectations might have been adopted over the years.
| leobg wrote:
| 1) Apply a discount on notability for people based on how
| near their birthdate is to now. If Hammurabi and Jordan
| Peterson have the same score, Hammurabi should win by far.
|
| 2) Use an additional book corpus. Someone mentioned in books
| from 1500, 1800 and 2022 should score higher than someone
| popular in only one era.
| fatjokes wrote:
| I feel bad for the city whose most famous resident is Ted Cruz.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| The difference between the EU and US is wild. EU is mostly
| historical figures, Picasso, Da Vinci, Erasmus, Van Gogh, and of
| course Adolf. But US, even though some old presidents, it's
| mostly pop & movie stars.
| taink wrote:
| Well, the linked study[1] does note an anglo-saxon bias:
|
| > We document an Anglo-Saxon bias present in the English
| edition of Wikipedia, and document when it matters and when
| not.
|
| Regardless of these biases, Europe has much more historical
| background than the US.
|
| Finally, this data is based upon Wikipedia and Wikidata. I
| gather datasets from India or China would provide much
| different results.
|
| Interesting project nonetheless!
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| Yeah, EU has a much richer history since we don't know much
| about the US pre-1750.
|
| Go over the Levant and you start seeing Paul the Apostle,
| Diogenes, Ptolemy, etc. which makes Voltaire look like a modern
| political commentator.
| mkl wrote:
| > Go over the Levant and you start seeing Paul the Apostle,
| Diogenes, Ptolemy, etc.
|
| And Keanu Reeves! I had no idea.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| There are also a lot of historical figures in EU from 1750 -
| 1945. It's more that US has taken over the cultural dominance
| after the second world war.
|
| And that it hasn't done so with philosophers, artists,
| scientist or dictators. But mostly with entertainers.
| ptato wrote:
| When I selected sports it got a bit buggy. Balotelli in Madrid,
| Maradona in Barranquilla.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| George Orwell, Richard Dawkins, etc some where really
| illuminating
| drac89 wrote:
| if anyone interested here is the Github link to the source code
| =>
| https://github.com/tjukanovt/tjukanovt.github.io/blob/master...
| [deleted]
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Amazing graphics.
| 101008 wrote:
| What is it using to calculate the ranking? Definitely wrong in
| Argentina, where Diego Maradona does not even appear when you
| filter by Sports (!).
| seaourfreed wrote:
| Bill Gates didn't make the list of people who are famous
| alabhyajindal wrote:
| Wow this is super cool
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Most famous when viewing USA while zoomed out is Donald Trump???
| crims0n wrote:
| Is that really so surprising? He has been world famous since
| the 80s and was dominating headlines during his presidency.
| noduerme wrote:
| Santa Monica is... Sean Penn? Who made this?
| djmips wrote:
| Who should it be?
| larsonnn wrote:
| Yeah ofc it's just Hitler you see.
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| No Billy Connolly in Glasgow :(
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| So it seems the most famous people everywhere have to do with
| politics ... particularly involved in the most deadly conflicts
| and wars.
| shmde wrote:
| Today I learnt that George Orwell was born in India.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Weird. No famous people are noted at the house I grew up in.
|
| Bad joke. This is amazing - thank you.
| opheliate wrote:
| Might be worth updating this with the latest from Wikidata: It
| looks like Elliot Page [0] is listed under his birth name, with
| the wrong gender too. Just one example, but also I'm sure other
| things have changed :)
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Page
| lekevicius wrote:
| Shinzo Abe marked as "probably alive", so clearly some data is
| out of sync with WikiData.
| tjukanov wrote:
| The dataset is a snapshot and it's not reading the API. That's
| why I added the word "probably" there to somehow tackle this
| kind of unfortunate cases.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| Leonardo da Vinci ahead of Hitler is pure fantasy.
|
| 95% of the population don't know who he was, his profession or
| are able to cite any of his work.
|
| Everybody knows who Hitler is.
|
| Mona Lisa vs. Hitler that I could see being a close one with
| maybe Mona Lisa ending up ahead. Still it would be Hitler IMHO.
|
| But I don't think it's fair to attribute Mona Lisa fame to
| Leonardo
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Everyone knows who da Vinci is in Europe, idk where you got the
| 95% figure from.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| I challange you to try. Namedrop Hitler vs. Da Vinci and see
| how people react
| lrpe wrote:
| Nice map, but the color palette causes some serious eye strain.
| jmfayard wrote:
| Jean-Paul Sartre is shown as the most famous people born in
| Colombia
|
| I think Simon Bolivar or Shakira or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or
| many others have a better claim to the title
|
| Especially since Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris
|
| What's weird is that wikidata has the correct info
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9364
| thenoblesquid wrote:
| Does Pablo Escobar belong in that conversation? Or am I like
| many others who have just been exposed to the show Narcos which
| makes up the entirety of our Colombian experience?
| eesmith wrote:
| Changed from Paris to Bogota on 9 November 2018 by someone from
| 190.145.246.250 .
| https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q9364&diff=785288...
|
| Change back to Paris on 22 December 2018.
|
| On 17 March 2019 2a01:e35:8ab4:ac00:75c3:3673:f22b:4a45 changed
| to Tokyo.
|
| On 30 September 2019 201.187.105.154 changed to Chile.
|
| On 16 January 2020 changed to Efflamm.
|
| On 16 January 2020 changed to Paris, where it's been ever
| since.
|
| This signature tells us the dataset for the paper was extracted
| in November or December of 2018.
|
| Various other bits of high-schooler sabotage:
|
| 30 September 2019 201.187.105.154 changed place of death to
| Easter Island.
|
| 29 November 2018 190.247.191.178 changed place of burial to
| Bikini Bottom.
|
| 7 March 2019 201.164.233.103 changed cause of death (P509) to
| cocaine.
| jmfayard wrote:
| Hilarious view of what is going on behind the scenes, thanks!
| lentil_soup wrote:
| Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela, though, it is
| shown as the most famous person there
| AccountAccount1 wrote:
| where is messi?
| shmde wrote:
| Overshadowed by Che Guevara. They belong to the same city.
| bb123 wrote:
| Cambridge UK shows John Maynard Keynes. I think Charles Darwin,
| Stephen Hawking and Isaac Newton might dispute that!
| midasuni wrote:
| Darwin was born in Shrewbury if I recall correctly. Newton in
| rural Lincolnshire. I don't remember Hawking off hand but I
| suspect he wasn't born there.
| mkl wrote:
| Darwin, Hawking, and Newton are all on the map, in their places
| of birth like they should be.
| galactus wrote:
| Jean Paul Sartre was colombian? what? :D
| gossamer wrote:
| I noticed that too. Wikipedia says Paris. I think it is an
| error. I don't think he was born in Bogota.
| jibbit wrote:
| I don't think Charlie Chaplin is the most famous Londoner
| sunsetandlabrea wrote:
| It's hard to imagine someone more famous than Charlie Chaplin.
| scottyah wrote:
| Jesus Christ
| joe463369 wrote:
| JC was actually born in Luton. He didn't move to London
| until he was 7.
| SuperSandro2000 wrote:
| Looking at Europe: Adolf Hitler
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I'm sure George W. Bush would _love_ to see his name in
| Connecticut.
| cplli wrote:
| Considering some of the people on there, the HN title could be
| "famous & infamous", or as the project puts it on the page,
| "Notable". Still, very awesome project!
| rory wrote:
| Infamous people are definitionally famous.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Would be cool if you listed the city!
| idontpost wrote:
| Why is George Washington shown as being from Pennsylvania?
| Geee wrote:
| What are those guys doing at the poles? Pretty sure that William
| Lounsbery wasn't born in Antarctica. There's also a Finnish
| politician born near the North Pole.
| Aachen wrote:
| Just alt-tabbed from an OpenStreetMap chat to HN and took "map"
| in the title as a verb. Mildly disappointed I don't get to map
| with them! (Was already wondering how this was going to work,
| figured it probably means the most well-known mapper or so.)
| davidguetta wrote:
| This map is so awesome. I want to do somethings similar for a
| hobby of mine, i'll have to check how you did the progressive
| zooming thing.
| 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E wrote:
| Check out North vs South Korea.
| danpalmer wrote:
| This is wonderful. I just learnt that a composer I love the music
| of was born where I currently live (Michael Nyman) and that some
| of my favourite actors come from where I grew up (UK South
| coast).
|
| Great idea, good way to learn more about people and places.
| macintux wrote:
| Very cool project, and also reveals buggy data to fix.
|
| One note if the creator is here: it looks like deprecated
| locations are included. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q596717
| includes both Indiana (deprecated) and Linton, Indiana, and he
| shows up on the map near the center of Indiana apparently as its
| most notable person, which is clearly not the case.
| grumple wrote:
| Noam Chomsky over Will Smith for Philly, who doesn't show up at
| all? So wrong. The People Map seemed to get some more things
| right.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| If you zoom in on Philly it seems like they position Grace
| Kelly in Center City and Noam Chomsky in North Philly
| somewhere. Noam Chomsky was actually born in North Philly
| (according to Wikipedia) - I can't tell what part of
| Philadelphia Grace Kelly should be associated with.
|
| But then they don't have _anyone_ in West Philly. I don 't know
| if Will Smith is the most famous person associated with
| Philadelphia, but he is surely the famous person most
| associated with West Philadelphia.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| Interesting. For our small town in Germany (Lastrup) it's Ludger
| Gerdes [1]
|
| But even tho not born in Lastrup, Ozlem Tureci [2] who helped
| develop the Biontech Corona vaccine grew up here.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludger_Gerdes
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96zlem_T%C3%BCreci
| elif wrote:
| This map has huge generational and institutional biases.
|
| Who is Lee Norris of Greenville, NC? Does anyone know of him
| here?
|
| I can tell you 8/10 people under 20 know who Mr Beast is.
|
| Does being the leading content producer on the leading content
| platform not make you more "notable" than someone who had two
| backing roles on 90's TV sitcoms?
| BCM43 wrote:
| Wikidata has MrBeast listed as being born in Wichita, KS, where
| he's competing with Joe Walsh for notability. There's probably
| still a very reasonable argument to be made that MrBeast is
| more notable, but it's much less clear than Lee Norris.
| lcuff wrote:
| The most bizarre thing I found is the 'notability' score for
| Jesus at 204.5 and Muhammad at 152. Both well behind Britney
| Spears at 59. Britney's fans will be thrilled, I guess.
|
| Clicking around, the notability of Western pop culture folk
| generally seem enormously inflated.
| dwd wrote:
| Notability seems highly inflated towards recent and pop
| culture.
|
| Like favouring Neil Gaiman over Isambard Kingdom Brunel?
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| More people seen Britney than Jesus...
| einpoklum wrote:
| Some of the famous people are famous mythical people who
| possibly, or certainly, did not actually live.
| tomelders wrote:
| Brian Blessed is more famous than Diana Rigg.
| ComputerCat wrote:
| Ahah this is neat, thanks for sharing! Enjoyed looking up my
| hometown and seeing who was there.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| The container for the radio buttons stretches to at least to the
| center, isn't visible, and prevents clicking/tapping on map
| items. This is on mobile in FF.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Where's Kobe?
| lettergram wrote:
| These are very political based. Trust me the most famous person
| from Chicago is not Hillary Clinton.
|
| How about Walt Disney, Robin Williams, Kanye West, Hugh Hefner?
|
| Why was Hillary selected? Lol feels like a sampling bias.
| [deleted]
| Cd00d wrote:
| There's plenty of discussion in this thread on the methodology.
|
| Clearly Hillary has a longer and more verbose Wikipedia entry
| than any of those other people, which is no way surprising
| considering her length of tenure as a high profile national
| politician.
|
| You could be more helpful by presenting your superior approach
| to programmatically ranking 'fame'.
| kodt wrote:
| Also Hillary moved to Park Ridge when she was 3 years old, she
| likely has no memory of her time living in Chicago. An odd
| choice.
| shmde wrote:
| Yes, Che Guevara shows up in Argentina when it should be Messi
| jrogan993 wrote:
| Maradona too
| probably_wrong wrote:
| This user found Maradona hanging out in northern Colombia,
| where he's losing the notoriety war to Gabriel Garcia
| Marquez.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32275300
| IcyHordr wrote:
| Thank you, I love this!
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Fun. My biggest surprise so far is Ruggero Deodato. Did not
| expect to see him.
| loufe wrote:
| I'm surprised by the data, to be honest. I've never heard of
| either of the two "famous" people shown in my hometown. Strange
| considering we're known for a very famous actress and a very
| famous hockey player, neither of which showed up at all.
| psyc wrote:
| I've lived in about 15 different locations, and the only names
| I recognize are in very major cities, and one 2nd-largest-in-
| state city. I have the impression that I've heard of famous
| people coming from the other towns in the past but I can't
| remember the specifics.
| aasasd wrote:
| I was concerned for New York for a bit, since choosing one person
| must be brutal to all others. But apparently NYC actually
| consists of a ton of cities.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| It's a neat project, but does it ignore movie stars?
|
| I zoomed into my hometown of Springfield, MO where Brad Pitt is
| from and he wasn't listed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure
| he is a globally recognized actor.
| stephen_g wrote:
| It uses Wikidata as its data source, which has Brad Pitt listed
| as being born in Shawnee Oklahoma:
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q843999
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| Ah - my mistake then. I assumed since he went to high school
| here, he was from the area. TIL!
|
| But hey, at leas the fictional Jason Bourne apparently hails
| from Nixa, MO, so I've got that.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Ayn Rand for St. Petersburg...
|
| Hmm, I would have guessed Putin would out rank her, but maybe
| name changes affect things?
| cafard wrote:
| She shows up under culture. I'd have thought that Pushkin would
| have outranked her there, certainly outside the Anglosphere. Or
| one could make a case for Anna Akhmatova.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Answering a question I had looking at this amazing work, the data
| set has a heavy English influence, but they are aware of it and
| also worked toward mitigating the effect. From the source:
|
| > This strategy results in a cross-verified database of 2.29
| million unique individuals (an elite of 1/43,000 of human being
| having ever lived) among which 30% come from the 6 non-English
| editions of Wikipedia, a significant improvement over earlier
| works that have only focused on English Wikipedia only.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4
| dwd wrote:
| Sir Howard Florey seems to have missed out in Adelaide
| completely.
|
| Only the most significant person born in Australia, who's co-
| discovery in medicine has saved ~200 million lives in the last 80
| years.
| pcrh wrote:
| Curious notability ranking. Obama is the No.1 ranking person and
| Trump the No. 2, Leonardo Da Vinci is No. 3.
|
| Also was surprised to find that Audrey Hepburn is from Belgium
| (rank 158)...
| ryandrake wrote:
| I was also curious about how the "notability ranking" is
| calculated. Just looking at the American West:
|
| Demi Lovato: 226.5
|
| Demi Moore: 825, Tommy Lee Jones: 829, Dennis Hopper: 977.5,
| Woody Harrelson: 1319
|
| Wait, what? Who the heck is Demi Lovato? I never even heard of
| her until I browsed her Wikipedia page.
| whiterock wrote:
| According to this map Jean-Paul Sartre is from Colombia?!? He's
| born is Paris, France.
| lovestays4ever wrote:
| Is the source code available on github or somewhere else?
| boredemployee wrote:
| it's funny how some people can't just enjoy the product as it is.
| imagine if the author had to customize it to please everyone's
| agenda.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Which would make it even more complicated as some of the
| borders on the map are disputed.
| qabqabaca wrote:
| Is this your first time on HN? 90% of comments are people
| either pedantically picking apart the submissions or, if its a
| product, plugging their own alternative without commenting on
| the submission at all
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| It doesn't really add much for someone to comment, "This is
| great! There's nothing about it that isn't amazing!"
| boredemployee wrote:
| No one wants any of that. I just think a balance of good
| and constructive criticism would add lots of value, but the
| internet isn't prepared to have that conversation.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| Why should I be forced to enjoy the product as it is? It's one
| thing to make something like this for fun, but if you post it
| on an online link-sharing platform, you're bound to find people
| who don't enjoy what you've made.
| boredemployee wrote:
| Ok!
| archi42 wrote:
| Ha, nice visualization. Some surprises, e.g. I didn't know about
| Orwell, but literature isn't my strong suite.
|
| The data source seems a bit outdated, as it has Elliot Page still
| listed as Ellen Page (or there is some other notable person with
| that name which I don't know).
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