Ranking the Most Brilliant Birds with Data

Ranking the Most Brilliantly Colored Birds with Data

After building a massive dataset of bird colors, I set out to rank the most brilliant birds using math. I start with chroma, a measure of color intensity, but find that pure chroma favors solid red birds like the scarlet ibis. To reward birds with multiple colors and contrast, I use a weighted average and a power mean. The result is a top 40 list led by the orange-breasted bunting, with the scarlet ibis at number 20.