A Mathematical Theory of Fame

Speaker: Dr. Mikhail Simkin
Affiliation: Research Engineer, EE-UCLA

Abstract: We study empirically how the fame of WWI fighter-pilot aces, measured in numbers of web pages mentioning them, is related to their achievement, measured in numbers of opponent aircraft destroyed. We find that on the average fame grows exponentially with achievement; the correlation coefficient between achievement and the logarithm of fame is 0.72. We obtain similar results by comparing the fame of international chess title holders with their Elo ratings. The number of people with a particular level of achievement decreases exponentially with the level, leading to a power-law distribution of fame. We propose a stochastic model that can explain the exponential growth of fame with achievement. Next, we hypothesize that the same functional relation between achievement and fame that we found for the aces holds for other professions. This allows us to estimate achievement for professions where an unquestionable and universally accepted measure of achievement does not exist. We apply the method to Nobel Prize winners in Physics. For example, we obtain that Paul Dirac, who is a hundred times less famous than Einstein contributed to physics only two times less. We compare our results with Landau’s ranking.

Biography:  Dr. Mikhail Simkin earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University, and is currently a Research Engineer in the Electrical Engineering Department at UCLA. His current research interests include complex systems, social science, neural modeling, psychology, economics, and the behavioral sciences. He likes to develop mathematical theories of physical, social and biological phenomena. His work has received considerable media attention, including coverage in Nature, The New Scientist, The Guardian, BBC, Boston Globe, and The Scientific American,

For more information, contact Prof. Vwani Roychowdhury (vwani@ee.ucla.edu)

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Apr 20, 2016
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Location:
E-IV Tesla Room #53-125
420 Westwood Plaza - 5th Flr., Los Angeles CA 90095