Jesus the most famous person in the world — Justin Bieber 8,633rd

Jesus the most famous person in the world — Justin Bieber 8,633rd

"The significance of Jesus is shown by his mindshare today fully 2,000 years after his death. We don't see the same happening for Justin Bieber."

They believe that Justin Bieber's fame will not be as enduring as that of Jesus of Nazareth? Oh, professional researchers, is there no limit to thy wisdom? How can you see so clearly what is invisible to our untrained eyes?

By the way, the most significant woman was QE1, who is 13th on the list.

The book's accompanying website gets down to some very obscure people. To illustrate, Moonlight Graham ranks in the 80th and 90th percentiles on all of their criteria, so you can imagine the total unknowns who populate the lowest percentiles. An example: Andrew Agar, who ranks no better than 500,000th on any of their four yardsticks.

One criticism: their "gravitas" matrix needs work. For example, ranking third of all time is somebody called Arthur Haygarth, an amateur cricketer and cricket historian. Just below him is Dave Knight, "an American slalom canoer who competed in the early 1970s. He won a gold medal in the mixed C-2 event at the 1973 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships in Muotathal." In contrast, Sir Isaac Newton, a person of more than a little gravitas since he essentially created both physics and calculus, ranks 120 places lower on that scale. Further still down the list is Leo Tolstoy, author of two of the deepest books ever written, who ranks only 173 places below the obscure amateur cricketer and 172 places 'neath the guy who once won a slalom canoe event in Muotathal. By the way, Kim Kardashian ranks in the 90th percentile in gravitas, and it's difficult for me to imagine any human being with less gravitas than Kim.

In addition, two of their other criteria, "fame" and "celebrity," seem approximately synonymous at first blush, at least from the perspective of the dictionary definitions. (I have not tried to study their unique definitions or formulas.)

Having noted that, I'll go on to point out that their "significance" scale seems to be their most significant (appropriate, that), and the significance ranking seems to pass at least a quick-glance test of common sense.