Hawking Index

English

Etymology

Invented by American mathematician Jordan Ellenberg in 2014, and named after English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, whose book A Brief History of Time (1988) has been called “the most unread book of all time”.

Proper noun

the Hawking Index

  1. A humorous measure of how far people will, on average, read through a particular book before giving up.
    • 2024, Jan Krone, Tassilo Pellegrini, editors, Handbook of Media and Communication Economics: A European Perspective, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 703:
      The mathematician Ellenberg has developed the Hawking Index, but according to his own statements only for entertainment and not for scientific purposes.

Further reading

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