What you prefer to start with: Most highly-rated or most watched TED talks

Posted by: adonis49 on: July 11, 2012

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The most watched and most highly-rated TED talks at the moment

That is an eye opener: There got to be a difference between frequency of following a talk and how it is ranked by watchers. If you have no idea what is TED Talks (technology-education-and-development) you may first read https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/technology-education-and-development-ted-corporation-who-is-chris-anderson/

Maxim posted on June 29, 2011:

Recently the list of most watched TED talks appeared in TED blog.  

1. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 8,660,010 views
2. Jill Bolte Taylor  stroke of insight (2008): 8,087,935 views
3. Pranav Mistry on the thrilling potential of SixthSense (2009): 6,747,410 views
4. Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense (2009): 6,731,153 views
5. David Gallo  underwater astonishment (2007): 6,411,705 views
6. Tony Robbins asks Why we do what we do (2006): 4,909,505 views
7. Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen (2006): 3,954,776 views
8. Arthur Benjamin does mathemagic (2005): 3,664,705 views
9. Jeff Han demos his breakthrough multi-touchscreen (2006): 3,592,795 views
10. Johnny Lee shows Wii Remote hacks for educators (2008): 3,225,864 views
11. Blaise Aguera y Arcas runs through the Photosynth demo (2007): 3,007,440 views
12. Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing your genius (2009): 2,978,288 views
13. Dan Gilbert asks: Why are we happy? (2004): 2,903,993 views
14. Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe (2008): 2,629,230 views
15. Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation (2009): 2,616,363 views
16. Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice (2005): 2,263,065 views
17. Richard St. John shares 8 secrets of success (2005): 2,252,911 views
18. Mary Roach on the 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm (2009): 2,223,822 views
19. Simon Sinek on how great leaders inspire action (2010): 2,187,868 views
20. Chimamanda Adichie shares the danger of a single story (2009): 2,143,763 views

But I decided to take it one step further and create a list of the most highly-rated TED talks.
Which is not hard to do using their Youtube channel statistics. The list of most highly rated TED talks:

1. Marcin Jakubowski‘s open-sourced blueprints for civilization (2011): 71,943 views
2. Mike Ebeling‘s invention that unlocked a locked-in artist (2011): 45,480 views
3. Khan Salman‘s video to reinvent education (2011): 196,153 views
4. Michael Pawlyn is using nature’s genius in architecture (2011): 63,910 views
5. Sugata Mitra‘s new experiments in self-teaching (2010): 124,703 views
6. Paul Nicklen‘s tales of ice-bound wonderland (2011): 19,945 views
7. Dan Phillips‘ creative houses from reclaimed stuff (2010): 42,253 views
8. Eli Pariser beware online “filter bubbles” (2011): 363,394 views
9. Anders Ynnerman visualizes the medical data explosion (2011): 21,781 views
10. Fiorenzo Omenetto talks about silk, the ancient material of the future (2011): 15,814 views
11. William Li asks if we can eat to starve cancer (2010): 86,675 views
12. Anthony Atala talks about printing a human kidney (2011): 69,525 views
13. Benjamin Zander‘s classical music with shining eyes (2008): 399,387 views
14. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 8,660,010 views
15. Charles Limb on how brain works during musical improvisation (2011): 36,419 views
16. Jack Horner on building a dinosaur from a chicken (2011): 56,213 views
17. Bart Weetjens on how he taught rats to sniff out land mines (2010): 27,730 views
18. Sir Ken Robinson on the learning revolution (2010): 233,000 views

(I don’t know what was the combination and weight given to number of views and the corresponding rating, but these lists are great enough to start listening or reading the talks…

Looks like from the two lists that listeners prefer the hand-on materials delivered by the professional “technicians” rather than the professional holistic talkers. 

This might be due that people are no longer into reading serious stuff and prefer to bypass the trend that grabbed the 90’s with books proffering to preach the right way of going about doing business and life and…)

Tags: adonis49, books, Chris Anderson, Most highly-rated TED talks, SixthSense, technology-education-and-development, writing