The simplest approach would have been to create a straight composite score, he said.

WSJ: New York City Gifted-and-Talented Program's Math Is Questioned

We sort the companies in descending order by the highest composite score and then apply our Forbes Global 2000 rank.

FORBES: Global 2000 Methodology: How We Crunch The Numbers

One of the most recent additions, and the one which fetches the second highest composite score for guru appeal, is Ceradyne, Inc.

FORBES: Magazine Article

We add up the scores for all four metrics (equally weighted) and compile a composite score for each company based on their rankings for sales, profits, assets and market value.

FORBES: Global 2000 Methodology: How We Crunch The Numbers

The U.S. also fell out of first place in the overall 2006-2007 World Competitiveness rankings and now holds sixth place, with a composite score of 5.61 out of a possible 7.

FORBES: The Cost Of Corruption

The highest composite score gets the highest rank.

FORBES: Global 2000 Methodology: How We Crunch The Numbers

We gave special honors to Philweb of the Philippines (top profitability, based on operating income as a share of sales), to Royal Ceramics Lanka of Sri Lanka (return on investment, a near quintupling) and to E-House (China), the real-estate brokerage, for overall best composite score.

FORBES: Hong Kong's Tears for the USA

Once we had ranks for all these individual metrics, we tabulated a composite rank and score for each company.

FORBES

StarMine ranks qualifying analysts based on how they did compared to the Industry Estimate Score, or a composite of the SES scores for all the stocks in the specific industry.

FORBES: Lists