★ An entry · No. 139

Popular Rank, ranking by gut feeling

Rank anything with simple A-vs-B picks; a statistical model turns your taps into a confidence-rated order.

Ranking a long list in your head is overwhelming. Picking between just two things is easy. Popular Rank leans entirely on that: it shows you two items at a time, you tap the one you like more, and after enough picks it builds a full ranking out of your choices.

Tap the side you like more, one A-vs-B pick at a time.
Tap the side you like more, one A-vs-B pick at a time.

Under the hood it fits a Bradley-Terry model, the same kind of math used to rate chess players and sports teams, with bootstrap confidence intervals so it can tell you how sure it actually is about your number one. You can start from hundreds of built-in topics, paste your own list, or have Apple Intelligence generate one on device. The real challenge was getting comfortable with the statistics and then making them completely invisible to the person just tapping A or B.

Try it at popularrank.app.

Until next time, Todd
FILED UNDER #apps