Crackpot index: Difference between revisions

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== Baez's crackpot index ==

The method, initially proposed semi-seriously by mathematical physicist [[John C. Baez]] in 1992. In 1998, computesthe ancomputation of the index byused responses to a list of 3637 questions, each positive response contributing a point value ranging from 1 to 50. ; Thethe computation is initialized with a value of &minus;5.<ref name=NSUniversal>{{cite magazine
| date = 28 April 2010
| title = Towards a universal crackpot standard
| url = https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627582-100-towards-a-universal-crackpot-standard/
| magazine = [[New Scientist]]
| access-date =2023-08-10
}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html|title=Crackpot index|website=math.ucr.edu|access-date=2018-07-17}}</ref> An earlier version only had 17 questions with point values for each ranging from 1 to 40.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html|title=Crackpot index|date=1996-11-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19961110050053/http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html|access-date=2018-07-17|archive-date=1996-11-10}}</ref>

Baez confirmed in a 1993 letter to ''[[New Scientist]]'' that he created the index.<ref name=BaezNS>{{cite magazine