Bascule, Phil, and Yourdad won! Longshot guess proved right.

[Martin]

We've reached the target date and there is no way short of divine intervention or a computer error that their prediction will not turn out right.

 

I just checked Amazon.com and going by salesranks the Smolin book was selling over 9 times better than the five most popular string books average.

Checking at noon pacific time will make it "official" but i don't see how the picture can change substantially in the next three hours.

 

*The Trouble with Physics...and What Comes Next* rank was #637 among all books, and the top five stringies were

fabric 4021

elegant 4542

endless 6633

warped 6710

parallel 7140

 

so the average stringy rank was #5809.2

and the ratio 5809.2/637 was 9.1

 

For their prediction to be the closest, it just has to stay up over 4.5 for the next three hours.

 

This is pretty remarkable. I was expecting something around 2 or 3. We had seven people's predictions and four of us predicted in the range 1-3.

Congratulations to Yourdadonapogostick, Phil, and Bascule!

You are either incredibly lucky or you have a way better sense than I do of how the reading public is thinking.

 

Here's the link to the poll:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28251

[PhDP]

Survival of the luckiest

 

To be fair, it was more wishful thinking than a real prediction. I'm not a physicist, but I read about string theory I tend to side with skeptics.

[Martin]

The final outcome came surprisingly close to your prediction!

 

1 October noon pacific

Smolin book's rank #797

average rank of five most popular string #5165.6

 

ratio = 5165.6/797 = 6.5

 

in case anyone's curious the currently most popular stringies were

fabric 3203

elegant 4163

endless 5420

hyperspace 5494

warped 7548

 

You guys said 6 and the actual outcome was 6.5.

Maybe you should start a hedge fund.

[bascule]

Looks like one of my shot-in-the-dark guesses finally panned out

[ydoaPs]

Martin, don't I always guess right?

[Martin]

Martin, don't I always guess right?

yes, in the past it's been uncanny how many times you predicted right.

but this time you came in later than usual---so it was not especially impressive

[BenTheMan]

Amazon.com sales rank (current)

 

Lee Smolin #562

The Secret #17.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1582701709/ref=s9_asin_image_1/104-3907410-9272714?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=136Z2PTFBRPXSFVAXPPX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240701&pf_rd_i=507846

 

One can prove what they like when they invent the statistics.

[Martin]

Amazon.com sales rank (current)

 

Lee Smolin #562

...

 

Glad to see interest in Smolin impact, for whatever reason!

What do you guess the ratio will be on 1 November?

 

Your post prompted me to check how it is at the moment

2 October noon pacific time

Smolin salesrank #635

average salesrank of five most popular string #6617.6

ratio = 10.4

 

In case anyone is interested the five most popular string books were

elegant 3436

fabric 4393

endless 6677

warped 8595

parallel 9987

[BenTheMan]

Why don't you include the numbers from ``The Secret'' to improve your averages?

[Martin]

Why don't you include the numbers from ``The Secret'' to improve your averages?

 

Given the tone of your question, I suppose the obvious answer would be

"because I am not a String Phenomenologist!"

[BenTheMan]

Ahh. No. We are always quite frank about the numbers. And we actually do phsyics, instead of sociology.

 

But whatever.

[bascule]

Why don't you include the numbers from ``The Secret'' to improve your averages?

 

I know you're trying to single Martin out for an argument from popularity, but seriously... you're comparing the Trouble with Physics to The Secret?

 

You may as well compare Steven Weinberg to Deepak Chopra </slippery slope>

 

Martin's guess the X ratio polls are all in good fun and shouldn't be interpreted too seriously. I think if there's something to be taken from them it's that string theory research/interest is waning in light of certain intractable problems, many of which are enumerated by Smolin in his book, but I don't want to speak for Martin...

 

--

 

On an unrelated note, wonder what caused the spike in interest regarding TwP...

 

A potential hypothesis: The book's original publication date was September 19, 2006, and it may be drawing some additional attention due to its one year anniversary (which may even be a delayed effect as more readers become interested after reading blogs et al about the one year anniversary)

[BenTheMan]

you're comparing the Trouble with Physics to The Secret?

 

Pseudoscience is in this year. But seriously... The point is to show how ridiculous this all is. You may think that this is ``great fun'', but it seems that martin takes it awfully serious---to the point of spending his time scouring amazon.com sales records.

 

Showing that Lee Smolin's book is selling better than some string books is kind of a goofy thing to do. Personally, I am more impressed that Elegant Universe is the top selling string book after almost ten years in press.

[Martin]

...--to the point of spending his time scouring amazon.com sales records.

...

 

don't worry, it just takes a minute or two to do.

 

currently the ratio is 9.6

 

"Trouble..." salesrank is #638

 

average of topfive stringy ranks is #6113.8

 

Just relax and don't worry so much. No harm in keeping track of a few numbers. It can serve as a reality check for anyone who finds them surprising.

 

=====

BTW just as an afterthought, why not join the citations poll?

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28255

 

If you only want to focus on stuff you think is really serious---the drop in citations of recent papers should be of concern. I'd be interested to know your views. I recall the science reporter for the Sunday Times of London commenting on the sharp drop in string citations in a BBC interview not too long ago.

 

Compared to citations, booksales are a fairly trivial matter. They don't prove a book is right or wrong of course and nobody suggested they did---they do give some idea of impact however. If Brian Greene "Elegant" hadn't sold like it did then it would not have had such an impact.

[BenTheMan]

If you only want to focus on stuff you think is really serious---the drop in citations of recent papers should be of concern.

 

It's only a concern to people with nothing else to concern themselves about. Besides, it's all a bunch of bullshit like these sales numbers---they don't MEAN anything, except to people like you and Peter Woit.

 

Look at how many people cite Maldacena's AdS/CFT paper. Or Witten's String Theory Dynamics in Various dimensions. These papers outlined HUGE new areas of research, neither of which could be filled out in five years.

[Martin]

Ben if you really think that, then you haven't been in academia long enough. If you ever get to the point of applying for a postdoctoral fellowship, or for a junior faculty position, you will realize that citations are the lifeblood. The quality of your research, once it passes peer review, is gauged by how many people read it and consider it useful enough to cite as reference in their own papers.

 

Of course subjective judgment, by senior people, is important too. And the two kinds of measures often agree very closely. The highly respected (on subjective grounds) is often the same as the highly cited. Just how it works out.

 

I suspect you actually know this, so when you deny that cites matter it is just defensive bluster. If that is the case, then bluster away I don't think it does any harm.

[Reaper]

don't worry, it just takes a minute or two to do.

 

currently the ratio is 9.6

 

 

 

That's pretty high, especially given that the other theories are much more obscure in the public realm.

[bascule]

I suspect you actually know this, so when you deny that cites matter it is just defensive bluster. If that is the case, then bluster away I don't think it does any harm.

 

At least not any more than taking pot shots at string theory

[Martin]

At least not any more than taking pot shots at string theory

 

Now there's a completely innocent activity if there ever was one!

It has been so overhyped it will take years to deflate to reasonable size.

 

BTW when Woit's book first appeared Edward Witten put out an urgent message to the string community saying

"Don't respond! Whatever you do don't start counterattacking and acting defensive!" If I remember it was

in a letter to Nature magazine. Or some other periodical--I seem to remember British but it could have been one in the

US like Science.

 

But then there was a huge fuss at KITP, which got out video online. And Joe Polchinski made a kind of counterstand. Leonard Susskind said some really snide things about Smolin. The debate took off---the Smithsonian Museum in DC sponsored a debate between Brian Greene and Larry Krauss ("String, a theory of anything? a theory of nothing?")

 

My feeling is the string community personal interest would have been better served if folks had followed Witten's advice and not reacted at all. Just stayed cool, said nothing, and went about business.

[BenTheMan]

I suspect you actually know this, so when you deny that cites matter it is just defensive bluster. If that is the case, then bluster away I don't think it does any harm.

 

Whatever man. I am not under the impression that citations don't matter. And if you really want my honest opinion, there hasn't been a field changing paper in the past ten years or so. The one paper that has come out recently that will probably spawn a huge cite count is Intrilligator, Seiberg and some other guy whose name begins with S, about metastable supersymmetric vacua.

 

There are a thousand reasons why your index doesn't prove anything---perhaps the biggest reason is that the community is bigger now. Why don't you apply the same index to condensed matter, or biophysics? Or even (gasp) non-stringy quantum gravity approaches.

[bascule]

Or even (gasp) non-stringy quantum gravity approaches.

 

Personally I'd love to see citations in LQG compared to string theory

[Martin]

Personally I'd love to see citations in LQG compared to string theory

 

I expect they would look puny in terms of magnitude. Most nonstring approaches date from around 1998*

and for the first few years got very little support (still almost none in US)

so it is a smaller community, which even though they are productive means fewer papers

and so fewer citations.

It's a GROWING community, though.

I'll think about it.

 

*vintage 1990s LQG got an earlier start.

[bascule]

Well, rather than total number you could do a periodic metric of percentage growth/loss over time

[Martin]

Personally I'd love to see citations in LQG compared to string theory

I'll do it! It won't be "compared to string theory" because I don't have comparably complete data for nonstring---and I'm not sure i am all that interested in a competitive format. But I will try to do some collective measure of QUALITY that we can track year by year to see if there are TRENDS.

I am not sure what the format will be yet

===========================

we have to work with the data that is available and it is not as complete but here is one way:

for each year, like 2004, we take the top five QG and add up the cites they NOW have (in this case we arent lucky enough to know how many they got in that year) and then we divide by the number of years they have been accumulating cites, which in the case of papers published in 2004 would be THREE. This will give a quality index for that year.

 

OK I am starting with nonstring QG published 2003

 

114 Spin foam models for quantum gravity.

Alejandro Perez (Penn State U. & Schrodinger Inst., Vienna) . Jan 2003. 80pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.20:R43,2003.

e-Print: gr-qc/0301113

 

106 How far are we from the quantum theory of gravity?

Lee Smolin (Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys. & Waterloo U.) . Mar 2003. 84pp.

e-Print: hep-th/0303185

 

78 Loop quantum gravity effects on inflation and the CMB.

Shinji Tsujikawa (Portsmouth U., ICG) , Parampreet Singh (IUCAA, Pune) , Roy Maartens (Portsmouth U., ICG) . Nov 2003. 4pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.21:5767-5775,2004.

e-Print: astro-ph/0311015

 

75 Quantum symmetry, the cosmological constant and Planck scale phenomenology.

Giovanni Amelino-Camelia (Rome U. & INFN, Rome & Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys.) , Lee Smolin, Artem Starodubtsev (Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys. & Waterloo U.) . Jun 2003. 19pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.21:3095-3110,2004.

e-Print: hep-th/0306134

 

61 Cosmological applications of loop quantum gravity.

Martin Bojowald (Penn State U.) , Hugo A. Morales-Tecotl (Mexico City U., Iztapalapa & ICTP, Trieste) . CGPG-03-6-1, Jun 2003. 42pp.

To appear in the proceedings of 5th Mexican School on Gravitation and Mathematical Physics: The Early Universe and Observational Cosmology (DGFM 2002), Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico, 24-29 Nov 2002.

Published in Lect.Notes Phys.646:421-462,2004.

e-Print: gr-qc/0306008

 

21.7. the cites of these five total 434 and average 86.8 per paper. But they were accumulated over four years!

Much of the first year often doesnt count because people have not had time to assimilate and write their own paper using the idea or facts that they will cite. So the main accumulation is in effectively four years 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. So the annual RATE these papers accumulated cites was 86.8/4 = 21.7. This will be our measure of quality.

 

Now let's see what the quality was of the papers that were published the NEXT year, in 2004.

 

259 Background independent quantum gravity: A Status report.

Abhay Ashtekar (Penn State U. & Potsdam, Max Planck Inst. & Schrodinger Inst., Vienna) , Jerzy Lewandowski (Warsaw U. & Penn State U. & Potsdam, Max Planck Inst. & Schrodinger Inst., Vienna) . Apr 2004. 126pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.21:R53,2004.

e-Print: gr-qc/0404018

 

86 Black hole entropy in loop quantum gravity.

Krzysztof A. Meissner (Warsaw U.) . Jul 2004. 10pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.21:5245-5252,2004.

e-Print: gr-qc/0407052

 

69 An Invitation to loop quantum gravity.

Lee Smolin (Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys. & Waterloo U.) . Aug 2004. 51pp.

Published in *Cincinnati 2003, Quantum theory and symmetries* 655-682

e-Print: hep-th/0408048

 

53 Emergence of a 4-D world from causal quantum gravity.

J. Ambjorn (Bohr Inst. & Utrecht U.) , J. Jurkiewicz (Jagiellonian U.) , R. Loll (Utrecht U.) . SPIN-2004-05, ITP-UU-04-11, Apr 2004. 10pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.93:131301,2004.

e-Print: hep-th/0404156

 

47 Oscillatory universes in loop quantum cosmology and initial conditions for inflation.

James E. Lidsey, David J. Mulryne, N.J. Nunes, Reza Tavakol (Queen Mary, U. of London, Math. Sci.) . Jun 2004. 6pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.D70:063521,2004.

e-Print: gr-qc/0406042

 

34.3 The cites add up to 514 which is an average of 102.8 per paper. But it was accumulated over an effective 3 years! So we divide by 3: 102.8/3 = 34.3.

The quality of the 2004 crop was BETTER than that of the 2003 crop. the average 2004 paper (in the top five) accumulated cites at the higher rate of 34.3 cites per year during its lifetime so far. You see how it goes. Now we do the next year, 2005.

 

45 Graviton propagator from background-independent quantum gravity.

Carlo Rovelli (Marseille, CPT) . Aug 2005. 6pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.97:151301,2006.

e-Print: gr-qc/0508124

 

44 Loop quantum gravity: An Outside view.

Hermann Nicolai, Kasper Peeters, Marija Zamaklar (Potsdam, Max Planck Inst.) . AEI-2004-129, Jan 2005. 50pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.22:R193,2005.

e-Print: hep-th/0501114

 

40 Uniqueness of diffeomorphism invariant states on holonomy-flux algebras.

Jerzy Lewandowski (Penn State U. & Warsaw U.) , Andrzej Okolow (Warsaw U.) , Hanno Sahlmann (Penn State U.) , Thomas Thiemann (Potsdam, Max Planck Inst. & Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys. & Louisiana State U.) . AEI-2005-093, CGPG-04-5-3, Apr 2005. 38pp.

e-Print: gr-qc/0504147

 

39 Reconstructing the universe.

J. Ambjorn (Bohr Inst. & Utrecht U.) , J. Jurkiewicz (Jagiellonian U.) , R. Loll (Utrecht U.) . SPIN-05-14, ITP-UU-05-18, May 2005. 52pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.D72:064014,2005.

e-Print: hep-th/0505154

 

33 A Black hole mass threshold from non-singular quantum gravitational collapse.

Martin Bojowald (Potsdam, Max Planck Inst.) , Rituparno Goswami (Tata Inst.) , Roy Maartens (Portsmouth U., ICG) , Parampreet Singh (Penn State U.) . AEI-2005-020, IGPG-05-3-3, Mar 2005. 4pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.95:091302,2005.

e-Print: gr-qc/0503041

 

20.1 A drop in quality! The cites for the 2005 top five add up to 201 and average 40.2. But they have had about two years (effectively) to accumulate! So we divide by 2 and get 40.2/2 = 20.1. Now we do 2006, where we will be dividing by one. And that is as far as we can go for now.

 

84 Loop quantum cosmology.

Martin Bojowald (Penn State U. & Potsdam, Max Planck Inst.) . AEI-2005-185, IGPG-06-1-6, Jan 2006. 104pp.

Published in Living Rev.Rel.8:11,2005.

e-Print: gr-qc/0601085

 

59 Quantum nature of the big bang.

Abhay Ashtekar, Tomasz Pawlowski, Parampreet Singh (Penn State U.) . IGPG-06-2-1, Feb 2006. 4pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.96:141301,2006.

e-Print: gr-qc/0602086

 

31 Graviton propagator in loop quantum gravity.

Eugenio Bianchi (Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore) , Leonardo Modesto (Bologna U. & Marseille, CPT) , Carlo Rovelli (Marseille, CPT) , Simone Speziale (Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys.) . 10-04-2006, Apr 2006. 41pp.

Published in Class.Quant.Grav.23:6989-7028,2006.

e-Print: gr-qc/0604044

 

24 Spacetime structure of an evaporating black hole in quantum gravity.

A. Bonanno (Catania Astrophys. Observ. & INFN, Catania) , M. Reuter (Mainz U., Inst. Phys.) . MZ-TH-06-04, Feb 2006. 23pp.

Published in Phys.Rev.D73:083005,2006.

e-Print: hep-th/0602159

 

18 Loop Quantum Gravity: An Inside View.

Thomas Thiemann (Potsdam, Max Planck Inst. & Perimeter Inst. Theor. Phys.) . AEI-2006-066, Aug 2006. 58pp.

e-Print: hep-th/0608210

 

43.2 The cites to last year's crop total 216 and average 43.2. They have had about a year to accumulate them, so we divide by one. They are accumulating cites at the rate of 43.2. So that is this year's crop's measure of quality. It is even better than 2004, when the quality was 34.3.

 

NOW HOW ABOUT GUESSING THE QUALITY INDEX OF THE PAPERS APPEARING THIS YEAR. We wont have the same perspective until a year from now October 2008. Too bad it is such a long time to wait.

 

2003 21.7

2004 34.3

2005 20.1

2006 43.2

2007 ?

 

======================

the way to get the data is simple enough, you just go to Spires, at SLAC-Stanford and say

FIND K QUANTUM GRAVITY AND DATE = 2003

FIND K QUANTUM GRAVITY AND DATE = 2004

FIND K QUANTUM GRAVITY AND DATE = 2005

etc.

"k" means keyword.

and you select the option where they order the hits by citation rank, so they give them to you with the most-cited papers first. And you have to pick out the LQG-related nonstring QG from the other stuff, which is not too hard.

[bascule]

the way to get the data is simple enough, you just go to Spires, at SLAC-Stanford

 

This?

 

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/

 

and say

FIND K QUANTUM GRAVITY AND DATE = 2003

FIND K QUANTUM GRAVITY AND DATE = 2004

FIND K QUANTUM GRAVITY AND DATE = 2005

etc.

"k" means keyword.

 

Have a keyword list you want me to check?

 

and you select the option where they order the hits by citation rank, so they give them to you with the most-cited papers first. And you have to pick out the LQG-related nonstring QG from the other stuff, which is not too hard.

 

So... think this could be automated?