[EM] Guardian 100 Best Novels

[Toby Pereira]

 I'm not sure I'd be willing to devote several hours to try and reverse engineer their process and then almost certainly end up failing! But maybe I'll have a look at some point.
On a tangent to this, I sometimes think that these lists would benefit from an alternative version using proportional representation. So not the 100 top novels when considered individually, but the top 100 novels considered as a group of 100 taking into account the range of views. Not instead of, but as well as. I've often thought that the IMDB top 250 or BoardGameGeek top games list would benefit from this. I think it would be very interesting to see how the lists would differ - more polarising options would likely feature.
Back on the top novels, I remember when the BBC did their "Big Read" thing and came up with a top 200. It was voted for by viewers rather than "experts" but the list is very different.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtmlhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200.shtml
Toby



    On Monday, 18 May 2026 at 17:51:32 BST, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:  
 
 The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time
inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels.  I think it
would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot
set..

The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from
the ballots is very mysterious to me.

They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were
voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to
produce the overall list of 100 greatest books."

I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague
description and would produce the presented list.

For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while
99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used
to break approval ties.

Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots.
But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness
is on its four.

What is their formula?

 Best,
Ross
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