Letter: ABC, you're in

From R. V. Taylor

After reading your paragraph on “alphabetical bias”
(Feedback, 17 November),
I consulted my Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Entries
under A to M filled 504 pages, while N to Z filled a mere 244 pages. The average
length of each entry seemed broadly the same, so it would appear that twice the
number of scientists deemed worthy of mention fall into the first half of the
alphabet, compared with those whose names fall into the second half.

Of the contributors, 18 came under A to M, and 17 under N to Z (including the
consultant editor), so subconscious bias on their part can be ruled out. The 2:1
ratio seems very like Feedback’s test with the telephone directory (65 per cent
A to M). It could be that the second half of the alphabet simply contains more
of the “peculiar” letters—such as O, Q, U, X, Y and Z—which don’t
appear at the beginning of as many names, at least in the West. This is borne
out by my copy of Who’s Who in British History—590 pages for A to
M, 278 for N to Z.

It would be interesting to compare different Western languages, and indeed
others, such as transliterated Chinese.

Of course, the biographies only record those who made it to the top, but your
telephone directory test mirrors it, so the “classroom effect” seems
irrelevant.

Abingdon, Oxon