Simkin MV, Roychowdhury VP "Theory of aces: Fame by chance or merit?" Journal of Mathematical Sociology 30 (1): 33-42 Jan-March 2006

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail:
simkin at ee.ucla.edu
vwani at ee.ucla.edu


Title: Theory of aces: Fame by chance or merit?

Author(s): Simkin MV, Roychowdhury VP

Source: JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL SOCIOLOGY 30 (1): 33-42 JAN-MAR 2006

Document Type: Article    Language: English
Cited References: 11      Times Cited: 0

Abstract:
We study empirically how fame of WWI fighter-pilot aces, measured in
numbers of web pages mentioning them, is related to their achievement or
merit, measured in numbers of opponent aircraft destroyed. We find that on
average fame grows exponentially with achievement; to be precise, there is
a strong correlation (greater than or similar to 0.7) between achievement
and the logarithm of fame. At the same time, the number of individuals
achieving a particular level of merit decreases exponentially with the
magnitude of the level, leading to a power-law distribution of fame. A
stochastic model that can explain the exponential growth of fame with merit
is also proposed.

Author Keywords: fame; merit; meme; stochastic process
KeyWords Plus: EVOLUTION; NETWORKS

Addresses: Simkin MV (reprint author), Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Elect
Engn, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA
Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Elect Engn, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA

E-mail Addresses: vwani at ee.ucla.edu

Publisher: TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 4 PARK SQUARE, MILTON PARK, ABINGDON OX14
4RN, OXON, ENGLAND
Subject Category: MATHEMATICS, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS; SOCIAL
SCIENCES, MATHEMATICAL METHODS; SOCIOLOGY
IDS Number: 988AF

ISSN: 0022-250X

References:
BIANCONI G
Competition and multiscaling in evolving networks
EUROPHYSICS LETTERS 54 : 436 2001

 BRIN S
The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine
COMPUTER NETWORKS AND ISDN SYSTEMS 30 : 107 1998

 DAWKINS R
SELFISH GENE : 1976

 DOROGOVTSEV SN
Evolution of networks
ADVANCES IN PHYSICS 51 : 1079 2002

 GARFIELD E
CITATION INDEXING : 1976

 KRAPIVSKY PL
Organization of growing random networks
PHYSICAL REVIEW E 63 : Art. No. 066123 2001

 PRICE DJD
GENERAL THEORY OF BIBLIOMETRIC AND OTHER CUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE PROCESSES
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE 27 : 292 1976

 REDNER S
How popular is your paper? An empirical study of the citation distribution
EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B 4 : 131 1998

 SCHULMAN E
ANN IMPROBABLE RES 5 : 16 1999

 SIMON HA
ON A CLASS OF SKEW DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
BIOMETRIKA 42 : 425 1955

 YULE GU
A mathemahcal theory of evolution, based on the conclusions of Dr J C
Willis, F R S
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON SERIES B-
CONTAINING PAPERS OF A BIOLOGICAL CHARACTER 213 : 21 1925