Is anyone confused by "lower-ranked names"? To me this means A, B, C, but the article says "Wang said students whose surnames start with A, B, C, D or E received a 0.3-point higher grade out of 100 possible points than compared with when they were graded randomly."
So I guess "alphabetically lower ranked" means the last letters of the alphabet, not first? Confused.
The programmer's perspective and the user's perspective aren't always the same, and both need consideration. A user is going to see a list: it starts at the top, and it ends at the bottom. The first fields are higher, the later fields are lower.
Of course, if this is a sorted list, the first field will be the "lowest" value, for whatever comparison is used to sort it.
So I guess "alphabetically lower ranked" means the last letters of the alphabet, not first? Confused.