History and Philosophy of Physics

Further Research on the Quaoar Criterion

Authors: James Gunasekera
Comments: All databases and the source code are available. Abstract: Percentage of persons satisfying the criterion is higher than expected not only for Nobel Prize laureates, but also for winners of similar awards in similar categories: Ramon Magsaysay Award, Wolf Prize, Pulitzer Prize.

The main purpose of this study is to test the criterion and methods described in the article about Nobel Prize laureates[1] on other data. It was shown that the moments of birth of Nobel Prize laureates satisfy the so-called Quaoar criterion much more often than other moments. A random moment of time satisfies the criterion with probability around 0.245, but among the Nobel laureates 33.47% satisfy the criterion. Because there are 726 persons in five categories, this is a statistically significant deviation: 243 of them satisfy, while the mean value is 177.352, and the standard deviation is 11.535. Shape of the distribution is "bell curve". It was observed that deviation is higher if all laureates in Chemistry and Physics are excluded. +6.145 stdev if only 391 laureates in the remaining three categories are considered: Literature, Physiology/Medicine, Peace prize.
Category: History and Philosophy of Physics