Size is Relative

If you asked a real historian to name the biggest person in history you're unlikely to get past what do you mean by "biggest"?
As in height?
Do you really mean who was the most influential?
That would depend on your perspective as many considerations of size do.
And what perspective would that be? European, African, Middle Eastern or East Asian?

And all of this is before we even get to the issue of whether this is a valid question to ask. You probably don't think that it is, but if you really did want to ask "who's the biggest person in history?", you now don't need to bother as Steven Skiena and Charles B Ward have produced a pre-Christmas offering that will answer just that question for you. It's called "Who's Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank" and - probably not just because it's Santa season - puts Jesus Christ on top.

Putting aside any debate about whether there's a god, and/or whether he's the offspring of that god, as there's no independent evidence to support that he even existed, why do the authors consider Jesus to be a "historical figure"? Napoleon and Muhammad fill second and third place, with William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln making up the top five, and quick reading shows the next ninety plus to be actual people, so how did they come up with this list, if the "winner" isn't (wasn't?) verifiably a person at all?

Fortunately, they've answered that one for us, by explaining how utilising a statistical approach, inspired by Google's method of ranking web pages gives:

"We ranked historical figures just as Google ranks web pages, by integrating a diverse set of measurements about their reputation into a single consensus value.

Significance is related to fame but measures something different. Forgotten U.S. President Chester A. Arthur (who we rank as the 499th most significant person in history) is more historically significant than young pop singer Justin Bieber (currently ranked 8633), even though he may have a less devoted following and lower contemporary name recognition.

Historically significant figures leave statistical evidence of their presence behind, if one knows where to look for it, and we used several data sources to fuel our ranking algorithms, including Wikipedia, scanned books and Google n-grams.

To fairly compare contemporary figures like Britney Spears against the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, we adjusted for the fact that today’s stars will fade from living memory over the next several generations. Intuitively it is clear that Britney Spears’ mindshare will decline substantially over the next 100 years, as people who grew up hearing her are replaced by new generations. But Aristotle’s reputation will be much more stable because this transition occurred long ago. The reputation he has now is presumably destined to endure. By analyzing traces left in millions of scanned books, we can measure just how fast this decay occurs, and correct for it."

So it's not just the inclusion of people who may or may not have actually existed that's the book's only problem: there's also the issue of conducting a study of the biggest figures in history from a completely English-speaking perspective. No wonder the full list is mainly white, male and American.

If nothing else, the study has the potential to be the basis of a critical thinking workshop next year - possibly what's wrong with this list and why? - but doesn't do anything to answer the question the authors set themselves.
What's for next year?
Who's the biggest Belgian in history?
Poirot?

Twerky with Trimmings

I'm now back from yesterday's learner technology conference on big data where we learnt, amongst other things such as how the concept of learner analytics and big data can be used in educational contexts, what the country thinks is this year's best Christmas cracker joke.
Apparently its: "What does Miley Cyrus have for Christmas?" Answer "Twerky!"

Not withstanding that most of us are getting very bored with the whole twerking thing, especially those of us who live in Yorkshire (e.g. multiple hearings of the very unfunny "where does a Yorkshire man go every day?" "T'werk"), we should at the very least be pleased that cracker humour is at last reaching the 21st century, even if we have a government that with regards to Higher Education is still in the 1950s.

It's now been a week since our Chancellor announced the removal of the cap on student numbers by saying that “this year we have the highest proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds applying to university ever” and that the cap will be removed “at publicly-funded higher education institutions in England by 2015-16”, with "alternative providers also being freed in a similar manner that year". Note that there's no mention of colleges. And still nothing to explain where they fit in. They're not HEIs, so are they "alternative"? The impact on franchised provision we work out (or guess), but what about directly-funded numbers? How can FECs plan for the next three years? What consideration do they need to give to validation agreements?

Fifty plus years of HE delivery in non-HE institutions and it's still some sort of governmental blind spot despite Vince Cable claiming to know all about Higher Nationals because his brother has got one (no, not a joke, I was at the conference where he said it).
Maybe nobody in the treasury consulted him.

Or maybe the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was too busy considering the devastating effect that a nation singing Jingle Bells might have on the two-horse open sleigh industry...

Grave Doubts

It's in the news this week that archaeologists have discovered the final resting place of Alexander the Great.
Or maybe they haven't.
It's possible - well probable - that it's actually the ancient tomb of an anonymous Macedonian John Doe. Not that I'm cynical or anything, but it's easy to see why funding-hungry historians would make a headline-grabbing announcement that the Greek Culture Ministry has described as "overbold" speculation. The Greek public are apparently getting excited about the claim that the grave 370 miles north of Athens is that of Alexander, even though it doesn't quite stack up against the conventionally-accepted historical narrative that after his death in Babylon his body was taken to Alexandria in a honey-filled sarcophagus. Where he's resting now is admittedly a mystery, but ancient scribes recorded that some Romans like Pompey, Augustus and Julius Caesar visited his tomb in Egypt, with Caligula reportedly swiping the warrior's breastplate for a souvenir.

Next thing you know someone will be digging up a car park in a city like Leicester where I am now and claiming to have found the body of one of England's kings.
Oh...

Half-baked Breakfast Plan

I've just returned from three days  external examining in Belfast, where the lead story in Thursday's local paper was about the new president of the Faculty of Public Health describing his plan to prevent parents from driving their children to the school gates. Apparently, Professor John Ashton thinks that childhood obesity can be tackled by forcing pupils to walk a couple of hundred yards each day.
He says that

"One of the things we really should be doing is strictly prohibiting cars stopping outside school to drop kids off but have drop-off points, if at all, a few hundred yards away so at least the children get to walk a quarter of a mile each day from the dropping-off point ... it would make a difference."

Now it isn't that I think the sentiment is wrong, after all surely any exercise is better than nothing, but the removal of parental choice surely is. Pr Ashton's bullying tone is nothing to do with suggestions or recommendations, it's entry-level fascism. "Strictly prohibited" applies to all parents; not just those who haven't the sense to work out a food/fresh air ratio, or realise that maybe fried/fast food leads to little Johny/Jane/Jamal turning into something not-so-little around the middle.

This will doubtless lead to parents either risking the legion of ticket-happy goons waiting to enforce this directive on any car that dawdles by the school gates, or allow teenage art projects than have taken weeks to prepare getting ruined by a rain storm or blown apart in a gale. And for those who play sport, there's now the disincentive of lugging a cricket/hockey/football/rugby/etc bag an extra half-mile a day in addition to their school books!

Pr Ashton doesn't appear to have thought this though, but if he's the "UK's leading public health expert", what sort of alternative plan would those less qualified have come up with?

The Lights are on but Nobody's Holme(s)

Travelling back from our capital city this evening, I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard which has a story about how the Museum of London intends to make Sherlock Holmes the subject of it's 2014 "blockbuster exhibition". The article includes an interview with the museum's director, Sharon Ament, who is quoted as saying that it will "delve into the brain of one of the most famous Londoners of all time" and "look behind the deerstalker, pipe and cape in search of the 'real', complex and multifaceted Sherlock Holmes". She adds that "we all think we know Sherlock Holmes, but do we really?"

Having never met Ms Ament, I've no idea whether she actually believes the great detective to be a genuine historical figure, or if this is just some publicity-driven smoke and mirrors. Either way, openly displaying fiction as fact isn't something that any respectable institution ought to get involved in if it wants to retain public trust and academic credibility.

Huffing and Puffing and Not Blowing the House Down

Only a couple of weeks ago Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, was asserting that a society without religion is doomed to moral and social collapse. "You cannot expect the foundations of western civilisation to crumble and leave the rest of the building intact."

Quite where he gets his evidence from isn't clear (for example there's an irrelevant Facebook statistic about the "Friend" status of the under-35s) but a recent YouGov poll has come out since stating that only 25% of 18-24 year olds believe in God, and a mere 14% think that religion is, "on balance", a good thing.
So has an obvious absence of religious faith produced a generation of difficult-to-teach shallow hedonists? Does this, as Dr Sacks would presumably expect, mean that a decline in religion is leading us towards some radically new societal structure?

Nope, not a bit of it. Those surveyed confirmed that they are in most respects at least as level headed and conventional as their predecessors, with over 60 % looking forward to marriage and children and owning their own home. In other words, a significant majority expressing approval for the foundations of western civilisation, or what is normally described as traditional family values and its attendant structures.

Evidence eh? What would religious leaders do without it?

Easter Exaggeration (well actually it's a lie)

"Four out of five British adults believe in the power of prayer," according to a post on the Church of England's website yesterday (many thanks to Jenny Barlow for pointing me towards this "statistic") which references a new "ICM survey in the run-up to Easter".

Well, it's not just that I've a tendency to critically examine all sorts of claims and try to find out what they're based on, but I don't know four OR five people with any sort of religious inclination.
It doesn't even take much digging to read that the survey in question doesn't actually ask whether people believe in the power of prayer, or anything remotely similar, but instead has the question:

"Irrespective of whether you currently pray or not, if you were to pray for something at the moment, What would it be for?"

So, as 19% of respondents responded with "don't know" or said they would "never pray for anything", the C of E spin doctors contemptuously ignore the old "Thou shalt not bear false witness" commandment, and miraculously interpret this to mean that the remainder must believe that there's some sort of celestial concierge who responds to pestering (the website quotes the Archbishop of Canterbury as saying "...committed in prayer to Christ, and we will see a world transformed.").

However, as the Church article helpfully informs us that 31% of respondents said they would pray for world peace, and as there obviously isn't anything like "world peace", either nobody has got around to praying yet, God has so far ignored all the prayers but might do something about it later, or praying is a pointless exercise.

Maybe the C of E will add a request for clarification into its Pray One For Me programme of getting requests relayed through church groups?

More Money Matters, But No More Money?

So, just a few days after Harriet Harman had said (sort of - see last post!) that her Labour colleagues on Newcastle City Council were definitely not cutting their arts budget by 100%, the councillors have come up with some money after all.

Or have they?
In a miraculous feat of prestidigitation, £600,000 has "appeared" out of some sort of magic hat to replace the £1.2 million arts subsidy.

Or has it?
Closer inspection of this "fund" shows that nothing will happen before 2016, and that some of the total figure is coming from hoped-for private donations (council leader has called for "very wealthy" Geordie celebrities like Sting to contribute), some from as-yet-unsolicited business largesse, and whatever they can get from selling the Lord Mayor's 18th century coach.

So for now,  the arts are still getting a 100% cut, none of the libraries scheduled with closure are actually reprieved, and up in Newcastle the only art with a future is performing sleight of hand....

Money Matters

News in this week's Guardian on-line includes a piece about Newcastle City Council deciding to cut its Arts budget by 100 per cent.
This has been publicly backed by the shadow culture minister, Dan Jarvis, but criticised by many including the writer Lee Hall who said 'if as the shadow culture minister you cannot robustly and publicly defend the right of working-class and disadvantaged people to have access to libraries and culture, I do not understand what you are doing holding that brief'.

This little mess has prompted his boss, shadow culture secretary Harriet Harman, to deliver some damage limitation, but not in a way that stands up any sort of scrutiny. ‘There is not going to be a 100 per cent cut to the arts in Newcastle,’ she told The Guardian. ‘Across the board, they will be supporting the arts. I can’t give you the nitty-gritty . . .’
 
The facts, she means.
Actual, hard figures.
Finite numbers or information on where the funding will come from?
Anything at all that we can judge or evaluate?
Nope. Just some glib well-spun messages and the odd soundbite.

Maybe the plan is to leave one of those funny little notes for the next council leader telling him the money has run out so he can put it in a frame and ask the Arts Council if he can have a grant for it?

Weigh to go

Many of us who prefer to quote scientific data instead of diet or exercise to feel fitter have yet another reason to rejoice today as we've now got a much healthier body mass index without doing anything at all.

This is due to the formula we've been using to calculate body fat getting declared faulty by a University of Oxford Professor of Numerical Analysis. Nick Trefethen says that the original formula devised by Adolphe Quetelet in the 1830s underestimates how much broader tall people are on average. Trefethen's adjustment means that tall people (e.g six footers like me) who were previously misled into thinking they were fatter than they were are now thinner, but conversely what were up to yesterday short, normal people now count as overweight.

As Newton said, for every action, there's an an equal and opposite reaction.
Science eh?
Much better than exercise...

Parrot Fashion Disaster

Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that teenagers will now be encouraged to learn, by heart, some of the 130 poems in a new anthology for a nationwide competition. Parrot fashion we called it at school. Not an enlightening way for a young mind to learn anything because they end up with as much understanding of Chaucer, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and Hardy as, well, parrots.

Gove claims that this "policy" is intended to help "pass our cultural legacy on to the next generation", but in reality it'll only mean that our literature education regressing to the days of fold-up desks, ink wells, chalk boards and clips around the ear; but as most of our older generation remain utterly clueless when it comes to Shakespearean language or the works of Shelley, it obviously didn't work back then either. Does he not have any advisors who care (know?) about education enough to tell him that this is an ill-considered substitute for teaching, and that learning poetry, or pretty much any subject worth studying, is more to do with developing an understanding, not memorising by rote?

What next for the self-interested point scorers who want to take us back to some mythical golden age of education? Returning imperial measurements to the classroom alongside metric because that’s the way it was when everybody had rickets?

Oh dear.
Apparently that's already another "policy" with no obvious benefit to future of the nation....

Post-Christmas Post

Today's BBC website carries the news that scientists have discovered that the original kilogram, the standard by which all weight is measured, has become slightly heavier since it was cast from platinum-iridium in France 137 years ago. This is apparently due to small amounts of pollution collecting on its surface, and as a result, everything else has become lighter, including us.

As Peter Cumpson, professor of MicroElectroMechanical systems at Newcastle University, puts it "It is a really tiny effect, but strictly speaking we are all slightly lighter than we were in the late 1800s."
This means that I'm now sat in a Belfast hotel room weighing less than I thought I did when I left home, even though my weight has stayed exactly the same.

Not only that, but as the distance in kilometres between here and home is based on the speed of light, which is derived from how fast light might travel between two fixed points even though Albert Einstein declared that there were no fixed points, I'm now convincing myself that post-Christmas gym exertions aren't worth the effort. After all, if each walk down the drive is actually a slightly further distance travelled, but in the same amount of time as before, surely I must have got faster as well as lighter?

Just need someone to sort Time out and I can convince myself that I'm getting younger as well...