Crackpot index: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:48, 10 May 2009

Revision as of 03:45, 2 July 2009

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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 [[crank (person)|crank]]y, 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<ref>{{cite web |url=http://primes.utm.edu/notes/crackpot.html |title= ''The PrimeNumbers' Crackpot index'' |accessdate= October 23 2007 |dateformat= mdyauthor=Chris Caldwell}}</ref> which is a field with many famous unsolved problems that are easy to understand for amateur mathematicians.