After five years of number-crunching and methodological controversy, the NRC's rankings of US graduate programs were released today, three years after the target date and fifteen since the previous ranking. Peruse the results at phds.org. Instead of numerical ratings, the NRC released two rankings, the "R-ranking" and the "S-ranking", each one with a wide error bar around it. Confused yet? Brian Leiter thinks the philosophy rankings "qualify as somewhere between "odd" and "inexplicable."" The University of Washington's CS department says their ranking of 15-32 is "clearly erroneous." Obviously, the only appropriate response is to compute asymptotic formulae for the number of possible fuzzy rankings.
posted by escabeche on Sep 28, 2010 - 40 comments

In a time of top 10 lists, there are those who aim higher: They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? maintains an annually updated list of the 1,000 greatest films ever made, as well as the 250 greatest of the 21st century. Kevin B. Lee wants to see them all. How many have you seen? (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Dec 29, 2008 - 55 comments

Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s (dis|cuss|discuss).
posted by LinusMines on Jul 1, 2004 - 117 comments

The 100 greatest British albums ... and look what came first. Why? I personally don't believe the justification given. And surely the word Rock is missing from the title of the poll because I don't see many other genres mentioned. To be honest, I'm with Miranda Sawyer on this one -- why aren't more girls aloud?
posted by feelinglistless on Jun 20, 2004 - 71 comments

The inaugural World Terrorism Index from the World Markets Research Centre ranks Australia at 38 (out of 186), the UK at number 10 and the US at number 4. So who is number 1? [More inside...]
posted by i_cola on Aug 18, 2003 - 10 comments

Which Country Has The Most Beautiful Women? The best quality of life? The most divorces? The most mobile phones? The highest cost of living? Which one is the most visited? Rank the bastards! After browsing through this website, I'm sure the conclusion that we're all living in the wrong one is inescapable. The statistics and sources may be questionable, but there sure are a lot of interesting lists here! Meanwhile my own country, Portugal, has just been denounced as the the laziest in Europe and the booziest in the world. They lie! They lie! [Actually, it's a fair cop, guv. And it was nice to drag down the Brits with us.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Apr 17, 2003 - 53 comments

The two best music videos ever are Spike Jonze productions, says VH1. Weapon Of Choice wins, followed by Sabotage. Personally I'd go for Island In The Sun out of the Jonze oeuvre, but all-time......off the top of my head I'd probably go for Lionel Ritchie's comedy classic 'Hello'. What do you reckon to be the top dog of music promos?
posted by boneybaloney on Apr 26, 2002 - 79 comments

Today, MetaFilter is the CoolSTOP Best of Cool award winner. Joe Jenett says "At first, the large fonts seemed awkward to me - then it dawned on me that when you have a lot to read, the big type is kinda nice!" I just wanted to add that if you register, you can change the body text font size and family, turn off link underlining, and launch hyperlinks in new windows if you want, it's all in the preferences.
posted by mathowie on Jan 23, 2000 - 3 comments