A linear ordering of a multi-parameter universe is usually nonsense

We are talking about the most beautiful woman in the world, about the largest cave in Europe, about the best sportsman of a particular year. We have even started to rank companies according to their ‘‘intellectual assets’’, universities according to their ‘‘importance’’, and scientists according to their ‘‘impact’’. It is time that we protest against this culture of ‘‘linearity’’ in a world that is multi-faceted, where many things cannot be described by one parameter, but only (if at all) by a very long vector of parameters. In this paper, I investigate this phenomenon to some extent as it applies to (computer) scientists and also indicate a link to the information avalanche we are confronted with. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.