Discuss something to be ranked, but you cannot choose colleges or universities. For example: movies, musicians/bands, sports teams, athletes, news sites, politicians, restaurants, hospitals, doctors, jobs, cities, states, countries, “best” anything, etc.

1. Describe at least three different ways you could rank these kinds of things/people/etc. You do not need to actually get the data and rank them (or even verify that the data you would use to rank is available), but you should briefly discuss what that data could be.

For example, if you want to measure reputation, would you survey people, like the US News Peer Assessment Score surveys university presidents? If so, does it matter who you survey?

Or would you use certain kinds of data that is likely already being collected, like our college dataset that includes data like tuition, cost of room and board, or class sizes? You do not have to make sure that this data actually exists.

2. Make an argument for why one of these three ways of operationalizing the ranking is “better” than the other two, based in some values and/or goals someone could have about the thing to be ranked. It may help to speak from your personal beliefs, someone you know, or to imagine and discuss a fictional case:

For example, one way of ranking may be better for some people than others because the two groups care about different things. In college rankings, some people may care more about tuition, debt, and how much students earn after graduation, while other people may care more about small class sizes, how happy the students are, or the amount of research that the professors publish.