Smolin impact in April

marcus

Yes, amazingly enough! I hadn't checked for some time and just happened to today and the ratio was 1.4.

This surprised me because I sort of thought the book was dropping out of sight. Sabine Hossenfelder who is a very savvy person, physicist at Perimeter and keeper of the famous scienceblog called Backreaction----she was predicting the ratio would have dropped down to 0.1 by the end of this month.

And here it is middle of month and it is an order of magnitude higher than what Bee (or "Hossi") predicted! Bee could still be right, but if today were the target date then you Mormonator would be the closest.

So in fact you still do have a shot.

marcus

Here's the amazon physics bestseller list in case anyone wants to check it out
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/14545
For consistency I take readings at noon pacific time.

1 September 6.4
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
...
13 April 1.4
...
1 May ?

on 13 April the salesranks of the five currently most popular stringy books were
elegant 1015
parallel 1198
hyperspace 1998
warped 5084
fabric 6389
for an average of 3136.8
and "Trouble with Physics" rank was 2202
making the ratio 3136.8/2202 = 1.4

Smolin's book has been out for almost 2 years now. Amazon began shipping copies in August 2006 (though officially it didn't appear until September) so one might expect it to drop out of sight as have several books by prominent physicists that came out even more recently (Steinhardt's and Susskind's to name a couple.) So, perhaps unexpectedly, Trouble with Physics" has legs.

marcus

Here's the amazon physics bestseller list in case anyone wants to check it out
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/14545
For consistency I take readings at noon pacific time. On 16 April the ratio was 1.6

1 September 6.4
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
...
13 April 1.4
...
16 April 1.6
...
1 May ?

on 16 April the noon salesranks of the five currently most popular stringy books were

parallel 1172
elegant 2179
hyperspace 4798
fabric 4997
warped 8300

for an average of 4289.2
and "Trouble with Physics" rank was 2691
making the ratio 4289.2/2691 = 1.6

marcus

We now have SIX forecasts. Welcome to Brad, a (physics?) graduate student. Brad congratulations on earning two bachelor's degrees one in Physics and one in Astronomy/Astrophysics! New fundamental discoveries seem more and more coming from the A&A direction so that sort of double bachelor's seems like preparation for an exciting time in grad school.

On 16 April the ratio was 1.1

1 September 6.4
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
...
13 April 1.4
...
16 April 1.6
...
22 April 1.1
...
1 May ?

on 22 April the noon salesranks of the five currently most popular stringy books were

fabric 2724
elegant 2759
parallel 3557
hyperspace 5111
elegant hardcover 7665

for a stringy rank average of 4363.2
and "Trouble with Physics" rank was 3798
making the ratio 4363.2/3798 = 1.1
TWP slightly better than on par with the stringy average.

marcus

A seventh forecast was just registered, by Riogho. From here on it seems like we are so close to the target date of 1 May that predictions shouldn't count, although there is still room for surprises.

Today's salesrank ratio was 1.7, which would make Mormonator and Brad the winners, if today were target. Mormonator won the last round, so that would be a return performance.

1 September 6.4
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
...
13 April 1.4
...
16 April 1.6
...
22 April 1.1
...
27 April 1.7
...
1 May ?

Four of us entered guesses in February: hurk, mormonator, ernie, and myself.
In March we were joined by Sabine Hossenfelder ("hossi") who runs an outstanding physics blog called "Backreaction" with her husband. Hossi is at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. In late April we got two more forecasts: from Brad_Ad and Riogho.

Riogho

IT just caught my eye beacuse I just finished the book and enjoyed it thoroughly :D

marcus

The winner is... whoever guessed the ratio on 1 May would be 1.0! *takes bow*


1 September 6.4
1 October 6.5
1 November 5.2
1 December 2.4
1 January 1.5
1 February 1.3
1 March 0.4
1 April 0.6
1 May 1.0


Four of us entered guesses in February: hurk, mormonator, ernie, and myself.
In March we were joined by Sabine Hossenfelder ("hossi") keeper of the physics blog "Backreaction". In late April we got three more forecasts: from Brad_Ad, Riogho, and AJSingh, making eight.

Thanks to all who took part, in both this month's and earlier rounds.

(The mods may want to move this thread to Sociology because it is ABOUT physics, in this case tracking a popular physics book. If they want to move it, that is fine with me. The game target date was reached today.)

mormonator_rm

Congrats, Marcus... you're so lucky... <8-)

Again, congratulations. This was a fun thread.

marcus

Thanks, mormonator.

I've set up a prediction poll for July
here
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=235575

to continue the tradition

marcus

Should say thanks to the mods and others who discussed this thoughtfully a while back. I think it is an excellent idea to have statistical measures of physics research threaded in the already existing SOCIAL SCIENCE forum, and also indices of public readership/awareness such as we have. So there are several prediction polls set up over in social science forum now.