ranking

A ranking is a relationship between a set of items, often recorded in a list, such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than", or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered. If two items are the same in rank it is considered a tie. By reducing detailed measures to a sequence of ordinal numbers, rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to certain criteria. Thus, for example, an Internet search engine may rank the pages it finds according to an estimation of their relevance, making it possible for the user quickly to select the pages they are likely to want to see. Analysis of data obtained by ranking commonly requires non-parametric statistics.

A ranking is a relationship between a set of items, often recorded in a list, such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than", or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered. If two items are the same in rank it is considered a tie. By reducing detailed measures to a sequence of ordinal numbers, rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to certain criteria. Thus, for example, an Internet search engine may rank the pages it finds according to an estimation of their relevance, making it possible for the user quickly to select the pages they are likely to want to see. Analysis of data obtained by ranking commonly requires non-parametric statistics. For v = 1.0, the fractional rank is the average of the ordinal ranks: (1 + 2) / 2 = 1.5. In a similar manner, for v = 5.0, the fractional rank is (7 + 8 + 9) / 3 = 8.0. Thus the fractional ranks are: 1.5, 1.5, 3.0, 4.5, 4.5, 6.0, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0 This method is called "Mean" by IBM SPSS and "average" by the R programming language in their methods to handle ties. ==Statistics== ==Sports== ==Education== League tables are used to compare the academic achievements of different institutions. College and university rankings order institutions in higher education by combinations of factors. In addition to entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools are ranked. These rankings usually are conducted by magazines, newspapers, governments and academics. For example, league tables of British universities are published annually by The Independent, The Sunday Times, and The Times. The primary aim of these rankings is to inform potential applicants about British universities based on a range of criteria. Similarly, in countries like India, league tables are being developed and a popular magazine, Education World, published them based on data from TheLearningPoint.net. It is complained that the ranking of England's schools to rigid guidelines that fail to take into account wider social conditions actually makes failing schools even worse. This is because the most involved parents will then avoid such schools, leaving only the children of non-ambitious parents to attend. ==Business== In business, league tables list the leaders in the business activity within a specific industry, ranking companies based on different criteria including revenue, earnings, and other relevant key performance indicators (such as market share and meeting customer expectations) enabling people to quickly analyze significant data. ==Applications== The rank methodology based on some specific indices is one of the most common systems used by policy makers and international organizations in order to assess the socio-economic context of the countries. Some notable examples include the Human Development Index (United Nations), Doing Business Index (World Bank), Corruption Perceptions Index (Transparency International), and Index of Economic Freedom (the Heritage Foundation). For instance, the Doing Business Indicator of the World Bank measures business regulations and their enforcement in 190 countries. Countries are ranked according to ten indicators that are synthesized to produce the final rank. Each indicator is composed of sub-indicators; for instance, the Registering Property Indicator is composed of four sub-indicators measuring time, procedures, costs, and quality of the land registration system. These kinds of ranks are based on subjective criteria for assigning the score. Sometimes, the adopted parameters may produce discrepancies with the empirical observations, therefore potential biases and paradox may emerge from the application of these criteria. ==Other examples== In politics, rankings may focus on the comparison of economic, social, environmental and governance performance of countries. Politicians themselves have also been ranked, based on the extent of their activities. In relation to credit standing, the ranking of a security refers to where that particular security would stand in a wind up of the issuing company, i.e., its seniority in the company's capital structure. For instance, capital notes are subordinated securities; they would rank behind senior debt in a wind up. In other words, the holders of senior debt would be paid out before subordinated debt holders received any funds. Search engines rank web pages by their expected relevance to a user's query using a combination of query-dependent and query-independent methods. Query-independent methods attempt to measure the estimated importance of a page, independent of any consideration of how well it matches the specific query. Query-independent ranking is usually based on link analysis; examples include the HITS algorithm, PageRank and TrustRank. Query-dependent methods attempt to measure the degree to which a page matches a specific query, independent of the importance of the page. Query-dependent ranking is usually based on heuristics that consider the number and locations of matches of the various query words on the page itself, in the URL or in any anchor text referring to the page. In webometrics, it is possible to rank institutions according to their presence in the web (number of webpages) and the impact of these contents, such as the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. In video gaming, players may be given a ranking. To "rank up" is to achieve a higher ranking relative to other players, especially with strategies that do not depend on the player's skill. The TrueSkill ranking system is a skill based ranking system for Xbox Live developed at Microsoft Research. A bibliogram ranks common noun phrases in a piece of text. In language, the status of an item (usually through what is known as "downranking" or "rank-shifting") in relation to the uppermost rank in a clause; for example, in the sentence "I want to eat the cake you made today", "eat" is on the uppermost rank, but "made" is downranked as part of the nominal group "the cake you made today"; this nominal group behaves as though it were a single noun (i.e., I want to eat it), and thus the verb within it ("made") is ranked differently from "eat". Academic journal s are sometimes ranked according to impact factor; the number of later articles that cite articles in a given journal. ==See also== Ordinal data Percentile rank Rating (disambiguation) Recommender system ==External links== RANKNUM, a Matlab function to compute the five types of ranks TrueSkill Ranking System Ranking Library written in Ruby List of Global Development Indexes and Rankings [https://tasktechnology.net/web-design/why-your-website-not-ranking/]

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