We started "How Famous Is..." because we grew up in different countries and have lived in 3 different countries, we have been fascinated by figuring out who is famous where.
We'd always notice that in some countries, someone might be super well known and in others, they'd be totally unknown.
This led to many debates and discussions about how to best determine what famous even is. How could you possibly measure such a thing?
We hit upon the idea that if you asked someone to compare two people, and pick the one they consider more famous, you could come up with a pretty good method for comparing a large set of people. For instance, is Tom Petty more famous than Queen Elizabeth? Further, is Queen Elizabeth more famous than Obama? By comparing each of these, and the different countries that people are voting from, we can build a pretty good model.
Fun fact, Tom Petty is very famous in North America, and almost totally unknown outside of it.