Even without looking, I could pretty immediately tell that this was wikipedia data, since most of the names are "textbook famous".

So really - we're both saying that the word "famous" was probably the wrong pick. Should have just said "Map of wikipedia's most known people from every city" and then the skew is clear.

Ex: Atlanta is "Martin Luther King Jr". It's a great pick if you're going for "internationally recognized". But it's not a great pick for "famous" (at least in my opinion).

Just off the top of my head, more valid alternatives might have been:

- Kanye West

- Spike Lee

- Jeff Foxworthy

- Pat Conroy

- Julia Roberts

And Julia Roberts wasn't born in Atlanta; she shows up in the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, where she was born.

Besides that, though, MLK is certainly more famous than anyone you listed. Not even close.

You're saying that we should be defining famous as "known far and wide" - which is fine, but that makes "what would a foreigner recognize" a great fit for the pick.

I'm rebutting the idea that this is limited to non-western countries - It's not. If you want a pick who people from a location would identify with more as a local... this data isn't that: every person on my list is in my news much more often than MLK jr.

Yes, I realize location != language and it would get tricky in locations with multiple languages like Switzerland or countries with big diasporas. The dataset would still be biased as not all languages have Wikipedia.

It would be a small step into the right direction.

All datasets have bias. It's okay to acknowledge that and still find insights in the data.

Honestly curious: what highly accessible dataset that allows for the simple creations of 'fame metrics' would be better? I'm not aware of any.

There wouldn't be a 'total complete and true set' of data for this task, since not all countries use wiki's to the same extent, and languages don't actually delineate between country (eg: Spanish wikipedia is not exclusively the view of people from Spain, nor is English wikipedia exclusively the views of people from England).

Your original comment was valid and insightful. I replied to it because it triggered a lot of secondary criticism about sample bias, and those are the comments I was most trying to respond to.

Eg. Phil Collins isn't shown in favour of a cricketer from the early 20th century?

Sometimes things are imperfect, not racist.

If you're going by contemporary sources, I'd expect O'Shea to be on top, if we're including historical sources, I'd expect Meagher to be on top, unless Dorothea has some significant fame elsewhere than her city of birth

Just wait a few years, I feel like this nearly-satanic-panic level of sensitivity will pass. Maybe a decade or so.

That said there's a cheat I've heard of for the terminally lonely extravert: Clubs and Volunteering. I haven't tried either myself as I'm an introvert and near hermit happy with my three super-extravert friends that only need to hear from me a couple times a year.

Then there's the ultimate cheat, get married and have kids. Totally worth it, IMHO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintin...

For example, in countries bordering Russia, science nobel laureates are missing, but racist pseudoscientists and UFO theorists are listed.

Maybe those pseudoscientists and UFO theorists are more "well known" than the Nobel laureates? Also, these are not opposites: there are various examples of Nobel laureates that later became pseudoscientists (see Luc Montagnier [1]).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier#Controversies

You can't have done real science at one point and then retroactively be declared a non-scientist by people who in many cases couldn't solve a simple equation, let alone conduct the research those people did. Mullis' case is especially ironic, I've heard him called a "conspiracy theorist" by people who use his invention on a daily basis.

I came back here to write pretty much this comment.