Crackpot index
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The crackpot index is a number that rates scientific claims or the individuals that make them, in conjunction with a method for computing that number. The method, proposed (most likely as a joke) by mathematical physicist John Baez in 1992, computes an index by responses to a list of 37 questions, each positive response contributing a point value ranging from 1 to 50. The computation is initialized with a value of −5.
Presumably any positive value of the index indicates crankiness.
Though the index was not proposed as a serious method, it nevertheless has become popular in Internet discussions of whether a claim or an individual is cranky, particularly in physics (e.g. at the Usenet newsgroup sci.physics), or in mathematics.
Chris Caldwell's Prime Pages has a version adapted to prime number research[1] which is a field with many famous unsolved problems that are easy to understand for amateur mathematicians.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Chris Caldwell. The PrimeNumbers' Crackpot index. Retrieved on October 23, 2007.
[edit] External links
- John Baez, The Crackpot Index.
- Crank Dot Net, a list of allegedly cranky websites, roughly organized by subject area.
