TORONTO — Media outlets across the country — Globalnews.ca was not among them — reported Monday that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had determined Avril Lavigne is the most famous Canadian.
Problem is, it’s not true.
MIT says journalists misinterpreted the results on Pantheon, a website that analyzes data on the popularity of 11,340 public figures with Wikipedia pages in more than 25 languages.
“We remind our visitors that small difference in ranking (i.e. who is first, second or tenth) are not statistically meaningful and should not be used to draw strong conclusions about the popularity of similarly ranked individuals,” reads a disclaimer at Pantheon.
Lavigne is followed on the list by Jim Carrey, Justin Bieber, Celine Dion, Pamela Anderson, Leonard Cohen, Michael J. Fox, Bryan Adams, Frank Gehry and Nelly Furtado.
MIT researchers caution that Lavigne’s ranking is “statistically indistinguishable” from any of the other Canadians on the list.
They suggest some media outlets didn’t read the Methods section of the website, which clearly indicates it is “an incomplete resource” with “biases and limitations.”
The Pantheon site added: “There are limitations that should be considered carefully when interpreting the results.”
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