Or just pick a random scientist and ask ver what vis favorite book is, and 1 out of 5 will say: “Gödel, Escher, Bach”
Is there a citation on this statistic? Almost none of the scientists I know have even heard of GEB, let alone read it; ~10% know of it, and less than half of them have read it. (Granted I hang out with a lot of atomic physicists, so my sample may be biased).
It would have been more accurate to limit the sample to mathematicians and computer scientists, which I think was lukeprog’s (subconscious) reference class.
That I could see...the figures I can find say 400,000 copies sold. Assuming half of those are to mathematicians and computer scientists, that’s 200,000 sales to our reference class, which would be reasonable once we take into account people borrowing/downloading the book.
Is there a citation on this statistic? Almost none of the scientists I know have even heard of GEB, let alone read it; ~10% know of it, and less than half of them have read it. (Granted I hang out with a lot of atomic physicists, so my sample may be biased).
It would have been more accurate to limit the sample to mathematicians and computer scientists, which I think was lukeprog’s (subconscious) reference class.
That I could see...the figures I can find say 400,000 copies sold. Assuming half of those are to mathematicians and computer scientists, that’s 200,000 sales to our reference class, which would be reasonable once we take into account people borrowing/downloading the book.