The Ups and Downs of Rankings
May 1 -- — The latest issue of People is on the newsstands now. In it, the magazine promises, you will discover who are the 50 most beautiful people of the year.
Julia Roberts, the star of the hit movie Erin Brockovich, is on the cover and inside are pictures of — surprise — more actors, among them Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Ashley Judd, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denzel Washington, and Hilary Swank.
The top 50 includes singers too: Faith Hill, Tina Turner, Ricky Martin, and Shania Twain. The list also features sports figures Scott Erickson, John Michael Gambill, and Michelle Kwan as well as chef Ming Tsai, model Iman, violinist Joshua Bell, and financial analyst Alison Deans.
My hopes of being selected were dashed once again this year, but my disappointment was eased somewhat when I realized that no scientists or mathematicians appeared on the list.
Another personal reaction to the list was to wonder what happened to last year’s beautiful people. Why did so many of them suffer such a decline in looks that they’re off the list this year? Did face-lifts go bad, hair turn wispy, muscles go flabby? And what about the new entries to the list? Were they even close last year? Given that the candidates for the list are almost always celebrities of one sort or another, why such variability from year to year?
Similar objections can be raised about the ad hoc nature of many top 10 or top 100 lists — most loved people in the country, most hated, best dressed people, worst dressed, etc. The results vary wildly from year to year. For many publicly appraised traits (X), the list of the most X- ish can be determined by a simple mathematical product : a fluctuating and rough numerical measure of the trait ostensibly in question — beauty, dress, whatever — multiplied by the recognition rate of its possessor.
A celebrity can end up on the worst dressed list, for example, merely because he or she wore an odd outfit once or twice and he or she is known to tens of millions of people. The homeless person on the corner is certainly dressed worse than any celebrity, but he is known only to the people who step over him every morning.
