Arranged or organized in order by position, importance, or quality; or having a specified position in such an arrangement.
From Old French 'rank' meaning row or line, possibly from Germanic 'hring' (ring or circle). The word evolved from describing physical arrangement to describing hierarchical ordering.
The concept of ranking is so fundamental to how we organize information that we rarely notice it—but ranking systems themselves can be biased, which is why AI researchers worry about 'ranking bias' when algorithms order information, because what's ranked first gets disproportionate attention.
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