Data & methods

How a draw works

Each click first decides between a named figure (about 30% of draws) and an ordinary life. This rate is our choice, set far above reality so that named figures appear at all. Every result shows the odds on this site and the real-world odds side by side.

Named figures

People come from Wikidata (CC0): everyone recorded as a human, who died before 1926 and has at least one page on a Wikimedia project. That is 656,914 people in the current draw. More famous people are more likely: a person's weight is the square of the number of wiki pages about them, and one person's chance is capped. Women get a small boost because historical records under-represent them, and the figures are still heavily male and European. Card text is built from templates using these facts, so it says little about lesser-known people, and Wikidata itself can be wrong.

Excluded by rule: people recorded as murderers, assassins, serial killers, pirates, bandits, slave traders or executioners; people convicted of murder and similar violent crimes; perpetrators of massacres; prophets, apostles and founders of religions; and people who died as children. Saints, people revered in a faith, and Vietnamese historical figures appear only after a human review. These rules read Wikidata's labels, so they make mistakes both ways. Please report anything we missed.

Ordinary lives

Shares of ordinary lives combine three rough numbers: births per era from the Population Reference Bureau, an estimated regional share of population per era, and an estimated share of each role. The regional and role shares are approximations written by hand for this early version, not published statistics. Many people in early ages died as young children, and these stories do not show that.

Births by era

Sources

• Population Reference Bureau: How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?
• Wikidata (CC0)