Ranking: The Unwritten Rules of the Social Game We All Play

Ranking of people, schools, products, countries, and just about everything else is part of our daily lives. But we are in a paradoxical relationship with ranking: we believe that ranking is good because it is informative and objective; and we believe ranking is bad because it is biased and subjective, and occasionally, even manipulated. This text combines the application of scientific theories to everyday experience with entertaining personal stories.

"We like to see who is stronger, richer, better, or cleverer. Since we humans (1) love lists, (2) are competitive, and (3) are jealous of other people, we like ranking. We can rank some situations objectively: students ranked by their heights reflects objectivity. However, many "Top Ten" (or twenty-one, thirty-three, etc) lists are based on subjective categorization and give only the illusion of objectivity. In fact, we don't always want to be seen objectively since we don't mind having a better image or rank than deserved. The book applies scientific theories to everyday experience by raising and answering questions like: Are college ranking lists objective? How do we rank and rate countries based on their fragility, level of corruption, or even happiness? How do we find the most relevant web pages? How employees are ranked? The book is offered to people whose neighbor has a fancier car; employees, who are being ranked by their supervisors; managers, who are involved in ranking but may have qualms about the process; businessmen interested in creating better visibility for their companies; scientists, writers, artists, and other competitors who would like to see themselves at the top of a success list; college students who are just preparing to enter a new phase of social competition. The Reader will engage in an intellectual adventure to better understand the difficulties of navigating between objectivity and subjectivity and to better identify and modify her place in real and virtual communities by combining human and computational intelligence. ranking, rating, metrics, comparison, list, objective, subjective, manipulation, reputation, recommendation systems"--

"We like to see who is stronger, richer, better, or cleverer. Since we humans (1) love lists, (2) are competitive, and (3) are jealous of other people, we like ranking. We can rank some situations objectively: students ranked by their heights reflects objectivity. However, many "Top Ten" (or twenty-one, thirty-three, etc) lists are based on subjective categorization and give only the illusion of objectivity. In fact, we don't always want to be seen objectively since we don't mind having a better image or rank than deserved. The book applies scientific theories to everyday experience by raising and answering questions like: Are college ranking lists objective? How do we rank and rate countries based on their fragility, level of corruption, or even happiness? How do we find the most relevant web pages? How employees are ranked? The book is offered to people whose neighbor has a fancier car; employees, who are being ranked by their supervisors; managers, who are involved in ranking but may have qualms about the process; businessmen interested in creating better visibility for their companies; scientists, writers, artists, and other competitors who would like to see themselves at the top of a success list; college students who are just preparing to enter a new phase of social competition. The Reader will engage in an intellectual adventure to better understand the difficulties of navigating between objectivity and subjectivity and to better identify and modify her place in real and virtual communities by combining human and computational intelligence. ranking, rating, metrics, comparison, list, objective, subjective, manipulation, reputation, recommendation systems"--