And what this N represents is the total number of books available to be read in the world. W = The number of people in the world i = The number of book ideas an individual person has in their lifetime d = The fraction of people who will ever seriously desire to start writing a book s = The fraction of people who, given the desire to write, will actually start writing f = The fraction of people who, having started writing a book, will actually finish a first draft r = The fraction of people who, having finished a first draft, will finish a polished manuscript c = The fraction of people who, having finished their book, will choose to publish it p = The fraction of finished books that will actually be published in some formĪnd so, if you multiple w*i*d*s*f*r*c*p, what you get is also an N. I’ll use simpler variable names to make the formula more accessible. We can think of the variables at play as being pretty similar to what Drake originally envisioned. What would the Drake Equation be if, rather than asking how likely/unlikely it is that extraterrestrial life exists, it asked how likely/unlikely it is that great literature exists? So with this framework in mind, I started to think about art, and specifically literature, to see how we could think about the same problem but just replace the concept of aliens with books. I’m a huge fan of thinking about things as funnels. Recently, while reading about the Drake Equation, I thought about the similarities between the concepts.Īt its core, the Drake Equation is a way of breaking down a higher level problem into its component parts. The Drake Equation for LiteratureĪ couple of months ago, I wrote an article that looked at how mathematically improbable it is that great art even exists in the first place. we’re very alone in our galaxy) to over 15,000,000 (i.e. Reputable estimates for the output N range from 0.00000000000091 (i.e.
There is significant debate and wild margins of error associated with each variable. R∗ = The average rate of star formation in our galaxy fₚ = The fraction of those stars that have planets nₑ = The average number of planets that can support life per star fₗ = The fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point fᵢ = The fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life f𝒸 = The fraction of intelligent life that can develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L = The length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space The component variables of the equation are: The Drake Equation is a bottoms-up probabilistic argument for the likelihood of our being alone in the universe (or more accurately, in our galaxy). That single number, which he called N, represents the number of intelligent, sophisticated alien civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
It takes in a handful of variables and spits out a single number. The Drake Equation is simply a straightforward product of some inputs.
The math it represents could not be simpler. Today, this formula is known as the Drake Equation, in his honor.
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