Theory of aces

How does fame depend on achievement?

In general, an objective measure of achievement is difficult or impossible to define. However, there is one profession where such measure does exist. This is the case of fighter-pilots, for whom achievement can be measured as a number of opponent aircraft destroyed. An easily assessable index to fame is the number of web pages (as found using Google) that mention the person in question. Figure 1 shows a scatter plot of fame versus achievement for 392 German WWI aces. The fame, on average, grows exponentially with achievement (this can be explained by the appropriate stochastic model, see cond-mat/0310049). The correlation coefficient of 0.72 suggests that of the variation in logarithm of fame is explained by the variation in achievement.

Figure 1. A scatter plot of fame versus achievement for 392 WWI aces. (This figure is from cond-mat/0310049)

Fame is unfair

Exponential growth of fame with achievement leads to its unfair distribution. With 80 confirmed victories Manfred von Richthofen is the top-scoring ace of the WWI. With 4,720 Google hits he is also the most famous. The total amount of opponent aircraft destroyed by German aces in WWI is 5050. At the same time there are 17,674 Google hits for all of the German aces. This means that Manfred von Richthofen accumulated of fame, while being personally responsible for shooting down only of opponent aircraft. On the opposite side 60 lowest scoring aces (with 5 victories each) together shot down 300 aircraft, or of all aircraft destroyed. However, together they got only 463 Google hits, or of fame.

Some popular articles about this research:

Air aces show fame is not fair

Scientists Use Google To Measure Fame vs. Merit

(in Russian) Теория известности: пример воздушных асов показывает, что от славы не стоит ждать справедливости

(in German) Ruhm ist ungerecht

(in Norvegian) Kjendiser mer berømte enn fortjent?

Occasionally fame is even less deserved

During the discussion of this research on The Aerodrome forum von Lemming wrote:

This one seems to be more along the lines of what you are after:

From Google:

Searched the web for "mikhail simkin". Results 1 - 10 of about 352. Search took 0.19 seconds

Mikhail Simkin replied:

352 Google hits for "Mikhail Simkin". According to The Theory of Aces to achieve such level of fame an average WWI ace had to down over forty opponent aircraft.

What can I come up with to justify such number of Google hits in my case?

A private pilot license; 203.5 hrs total flight time; Cessna 152/172, Piper Cherokee.

Not a single combat mission. Shame. Nothing, but shame.