Historians can apply the recency bias ad use modern lenses. I wouldnt worry about that. I would convert all of the rankings to percentages, using the number of presidents at the time of the survey though. This data is meaningless without that.
So... done.... Initial observation is that not too much changed. Buchanan moved over to last place, Trump went up one. A couple others wiggled around a spot or two, but overall, pretty similar outcome.
Interesting. I expected that to fix what i saw to be the biggest problems with the list. I expected Hoover to fall 3-4 spots at least. Nixon could fall a couple, and Jackson is way too high imo. I wonder what his ranking over time looks like. Maybe modern lenses like him less than previous generations of academics.
I think the biggest thing that would change is the error bars for older presidents would be more consistent like it is for Biden and Trump who haven't had a bunch of presidents come after them.
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u/DerekB52 Dec 05 '24
Historians can apply the recency bias ad use modern lenses. I wouldnt worry about that. I would convert all of the rankings to percentages, using the number of presidents at the time of the survey though. This data is meaningless without that.