Nobel Prize Stockmarket coming down to the wire

[marcus]

the prize in physics is scheduled to be announced tomorrow (Tuesday)
there was an experiment at a German university's Econ department with a model stock market in Nobel prospects
registration is AFAIK closed but trading is still going on

the prize in Medicine for this year has been announced
Richard Axel und Linda B. Buck

interestingly enough in physics Carlo Rovelli has recently been proposed as a new candidate, and has done rather well---topping the new candidates list in terms of the number of dollars invested

Here are the first 6 names on the New Candidates list, with the amounts of token money bet on them so far:

Brian Greene
Physik
$510.00

Calvin Quate
Physik
$1,310.00

Carlo Rovelli
Physik
$42,210.00

Eli Yablonovitch
Physik
$1,010.00

Eugene Parker
Physik
$2,320.00

George Smoot
Physik
$10.00

http://www.nobelpreisboerse.de/stocks.aspx?stc=1

Had I been able I believe I would have put some money on George Smoot, since he was a principal in the COBE project, the satellite that first mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background. I believe COBE was a significant step in the history of science and the Nobel would be an appropriate recognition of its achievement. The "New Candidates" were proposed too recently to get the requisite threshold investment (in most cases) to enter the market.
The "IPO" threshold is $50,000 invested. So you can see that Carlo Rovelli has $800 or so to go----that is, participants would have to buy $800 more of the initial offering before his stock would be placed on the open market for active trading.

The highest stock on the open market is currently that of Anton Zeilinger, although Peter Higgs stock has also done very well.

The German economists who have set up this toy stockmarket claim that it is not merely for fun, but is a scientific experiment to see if this kind of playmoney trading can predict stuff (like future decisions of a swedish committee)

 

[marcus]

the New Candidates list (with Brian Greene, Carlo Rovelli, George Smoot) has now been removed from the Nobel stockmarket website.
too late for getting more hats into the ring

trading in the physics category will stop in a few minutes,
at 6PM today Central European Time.

 

[marcus]

Since they just took down the New Candidates or "IPO" part of their listings, I am concerned that they may remove more, as trading has stopped or is about to stop. I will therefore copy in the list of prize prospects being traded, with their near-final prices. Traders in the game were motivated by being offered new-model IBM laptops for those with the highest playmoney "portfolio" worth at the end of the game. Each candidate's stock started out priced at $10. It would be bid down if those owning it decided chances were bad and were eager to sell. Participants owning shares of the actual winner are to score extra portfolio value at the end.

---exerpt from the Nobel stockmarket site---

Market information - Physics

Alain Aspect
Physik
$9.07
-9.30 %

Alan Guth
Physik
$10.53
5.30 %

Anton Zeilinger
Physik
$61.37
513.70 %

David Gross
Physik
$14.62
46.20 %

David Politzer
Physik
$14.75
47.50 %

David Wineland
Physik
$27.41
174.10 %

Deborah Jin
Physik
$18.48
84.80 %

Dmitri Diakonov
Physik
$12.90
29.00 %

Frank Wilczek
Physik
$20.07
100.70 %


Hermann E. Gaub
Physik
$0.77
-92.30 %

Ignacio Cirac
Physik
$21.79
117.90 %

James D. Bjorken
Physik
$9.75
-2.50 %

Jeffrey Goldstone
Physik
$8.59
-14.10 %

Margaret J. Geller
Physik
$9.87
-1.30 %


Michael Berry
Physik
$14.27
42.70 %


Michel Mayor
Physik
$8.42
-15.80 %


Peter Higgs
Physik
$45.37
353.70 %


Robert Brout
Physik
$5.89
-41.10 %


Shuji Nakamura
Physik
$9.14
-8.60 %


Sir Samuel Frederick Edwards
Physik
$10.81
8.10 %


Theodor W. Hänsch
Physik
$28.93
189.30 %

---end quote---

 

[meteor]

It's strange that is not Ashtekar in the list. I would give the Nobel to him.
But of the people of the list, I'm going to buy some stocks with the name Anton Zeilinger

 

[marcus]

Gross Politzer Wilczek were up 46-100 percent

David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, who were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, were up 46, 47, 100 percent on the stockmarket last time i looked.

they weren't the all-out favorites---the participants liked Anton Zeilinger and Peter Higgs---but they were among the top picks---especially Wilczek, who I believe is prominent for other reasons as well, besides the discovery of asymptotic freedom in QCD (for which the prize was awarded).

IIRC Gross Politzer and Wilczek were identified as likely winners a week or so back on Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit's blog. I guess the moral is to focus on Woit's blog (if you are seriously interested) and don't pay much attention to the stock market.

Here are updated links, some of this information went missing
yesterday but reappeared today.

http://www.nobelpreisboerse.de/stocks.aspx?stc=1
http://www.nobelpreisboerse.de/stocks.aspx?stc=1&expired=1

 

[selfAdjoint]

Woit today admits he has been saying this for years. Like the economist who bragged about predicting five of the last two recessions.

 

[Haelfix]

Yea they should have been given it about 5 years ago frankly, they are obvious choices. Amongst the last of the great particle physics success stories that led to so many Nobel prizes for decades.

Higgs is a shoe in if his particle is found at CERN or Fermilab in a few years.

The Stock market thing is mildly ridiculous.. The people betting are obviously clueless as to how the awards are given.

People like Brian Greene, Rovelli etc won't see nobels for 20+ years if at all. It will take the committee that long to figure out whether any future experiment which may confirm their theories, is actually valid and applicable, such that no alternate explanation is logically conceivable.

Besides, say in String theory I highly doubt Greene would be the first in line. Schwarz, M Greene, Susskind, Witten and Vafa are long before him.

Actually I think if SUSY is detected at CERN, Witten might get a nod at some point down the SUSY manifesto of big names (although at the tail end I suspect). But if he is to get a Nobel, IMO that will be what he gets it for more so than any of his achievements in String theory, even though they might be more important.

 

[arivero]

Witten is a Fields, isn't he? In some sense this is not very compatible with Nobel prize, according tradition.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Witten is a Fields, isn't he? In some sense this is not very compatible with Nobel prize, according tradition.

Yes, Witten received the Fields medal (the Mathematics top prize, awarded every four years). Why isn't it compatible with a Physics Nobel?

 

[marcus]

Yes, Witten received the Fields medal (the Mathematics top prize, awarded every four years). Why isn't it compatible with a Physics Nobel?

Alejandro was speaking of tradition.
I do not know of anyone who has been awarded the Nobel twice.
Has someone been awarded the Nobel in physics and then, a few years later, the Nobel in chemistry?

I do not know. I don't know a lot about the Nobel prize and its history.

But if no one has ever been awarded Nobel in two separate fields of science (like physics and chemistry) then could one also say, as Alejandro, that it is a tradition? A tradition that once is enough, for a person to get the highest science award (even if twice "deserved")

any comment? does anyone know if this is, in fact, a tradition?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Bardeen won the Physics Nobel twice, for the transister and for the BCS theory of superconductivity. Both times as member of a team of three. Linus Pauling won for Chemistry and then for Peace.

I don't think it's significnt that no-one won both a Nobel and a Fields. Through most of the twentieth century mathematics and physics were pretty standoffish. Mathematicians like von Neumann and Weyl were kept at arm's length from the "real" theory development. Dirac introduces his delta "function" and twenty years later Schwartz produces the mathematical theory of it as a distribution. It is precisely the development of the highly mathematecized string theory that has healed the rift.

 

[arivero]

SelfAdjoint (and Marcus): it is a very popular folktale, around all the world with some variants, involving Alfred Nobel, a girl, mathematic folks and astronomy folks, and even I read once of a woman self-accusing of being the disputed object of desire. But it boils down at the end to a jealousy history downplaying the possibility of mathematical nobels.

Traditionally, the Fields, with its 35 year limit, is seen as the Nobel for mathematics.

 

[marcus]

SelfAdjoint (and Marcus): it is a very popular folktale, around all the world with some variants, involving Alfred Nobel, a girl, mathematic folks and astronomy folks, and even I read once of a woman self-accusing of being the disputed object of desire. But it boils down at the end to a jealousy history downplaying the possibility of mathematical nobels.

Traditionally, the Fields, with its 35 year limit, is seen as the Nobel for mathematics.

I never heard the story but I can guess.
what can mathematicians do?
they are all so sexy and charming they will always
take the girlfriend away from a mere dynamite inventor!

 

[selfAdjoint]

Nobel and the mathematician Mittag-Leffler attended University together, and courted the same young lady. She chose Mittag-Leffler, to the great chagrin of Nobel. He went abroad to soothe his feelings.

Many years later, when he was planning his awards, he asked his advisors "If I have a mathematics prize, will Mittag-Leffler win it?". They allowed as how he would eventually if not at first. "Well, then, I won't have a mathematics prize", said Nobel.

Baez says this is an urban legend, and that it is inconsistent. And indeed the version he tells is inconsistent. But this is the version I heard in graduate school in the early sixties, and I don't see any inconsistencies in it.