Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Question for Nov 18 - PS

Here's another Time Person of the Year themed question.

As we all know, "Time Person of the Year" (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States newsmagazine Time that features and profiles a man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse, ..., has done the most to influence the events of the year.

The Person of the Year title has often been conferred upon a group of people, for example the Whistleblowers in 2002, represented by Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom; Coleen Rowley, FBI; and Sherron Watkins, Enron (Kiran's question from a few weeks ago).

Today's question: identify the largest group of people were conferred the title, and the year and the reason.

Bonus points for also identifying the second and third largest group of people that were conferred the "Time Person of the year".

11 comments:

Gypsy said...

In 2006, it was 'me' :)
The largest group must have been "You" in 2006, which refers to (american) people involved in social networking and knowledge distribution through the internet, amidst the unstable times of Iraq war and other political problems

Nikhil said...

The Person of the year in 2006 or 2007 was "You". That was for all the user generated content (Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook, Ebay etc. etc.) which was on the Internet.

Not sure about 2nd and 3rd. If I had to take guesses I'd say UN peacekeeping force or WHO or Amnesty international or Doctors without Borders etc.

Ankur said...

'You' - the millions of contributors to internet sites like wiki..
Don't remember the year (should be very recent - within last 5 years)

Guess for 2nd/3rd largest
The soldiers who raised the US Flag on Iwo Jima (that iconic photograph) ?

Dev said...

That might be last year (or 2007, i don't remember) when they had a mirror on the front cover, signifying "YOU" (the consumers, i believe).

For the second or third largest group, my guess would be a country or religious/terrorist organization like Al-Quaeda.

Rahul said...

I remember it was conferred on everybody- officially "YOU" at some point recently, perhaps because of the emergence of online social networking. If I am right, that has to be the largest group.

It has also been awarded to the American GI more than once, which is a pretty large number too.

Gaurav Kane said...

'You'- won in 2006 (everyone on earth)

Gaurav Kane said...

oh I forgot the reason- for internet use or something

shiv said...

The US military? During the vietnam war?

Unknown said...

Was it - Everyone who contributed to web content, not sure of the year, but must have been sometime in the last 3-4 years?

Sailesh Ganesh said...

The largest group is "you", which I think was meant to represent everyone who contributed to web 2.0.

The Answer said...

Answer: YOU - 2006
In 2006, Time magazine chose as its Person of the Year the millions of anonymous contributors of user-generated content to Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, the Linux operating system, and the multitudes of other websites featuring user contribution. The choice was personified simply as You. The cover had a computer screen with a mirror in it, to reflect "You"!

size = 1.36 billion
according to linear interpolation [1,2] of 2000 figure (360 million) and current figure (1.7 billion)

Congrats Gypsy, Nikhil, Ankur, Dev, Gaurav, Rahul, Narmeen, Sailesh!

Noone cracked the bonus question though. I guess it was much harder to guess (which is why it was kept as a bonus question).

Answer to bonus question:
2) American Woman - 1975
size = 220 million
according to wolfram alpha [3]

3) American middle class - 1969
size = 144 million
American middle class in 1969 was 71.2 percent [5] of the total population which was 202 million [4]

4) Baby boomer - 1966
the exact figure is left as an exercise for the reader

References:
[1] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
[2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+internet+users+
[3] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+women+in+america+in+1975
[4] http://www.infoplease.com/year/1969.html
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/22/us/middle-class-shrinks-us-says.html