High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either `ranked higher than`, `ranked lower than` or `ranked equal to` the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered.