Theory of Aces: Fame by Chance or Merit?

ABSTRACT

We study empirically how fame of WWI fighter-pilot aces, measured in numbers of web pages mentioning them, is related to their achievement or merit, measured in numbers of opponent aircraft destroyed. We find that on average fame grows exponentially with achievement; to be precise, there is a strong correlation (∼ 0.7) between achievement and the logarithm of fame. At the same time, the number of individuals achieving a particular level of merit decreases exponentially with the magnitude of the level, leading to a power-law distribution of fame. A stochastic model that can explain the exponential growth of fame with merit is also proposed.

Keywords:

• fame
• merit
• meme
• stochastic process

Notes

An ace is a fighter pilot who achieved five or more victories.

The complete list of used filter words is: flying, pilot, ace, flieger, Jasta, Fokker, and WWI.

The data used in the paper were collected around May 2003. Today's numbers of Google hits are different.