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From Robin Oakley-Hill

You report that Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury compared the number of web pages for each first world war flying ace with the number of planes shot down (18 October, p 17). The implication is that Manfred von Richthofen got far too much fame because he didn’t shoot down all that many planes. This shows the science of statistics going where it cannot really reach, like a family car trying to explore a water meadow.

Von Richthofen was famous for being an aristo – everyone used to love a gentleman rider – and above all for having a flying circus, inherited by Monty Python. That is the stuff fame is made of: glamour. Andy Warhol had far more to say about this than any statistician.

You say the researchers plan to do the same analysis for tennis players. They will, predictably, find that Pete Sampras has won much more than John McEnroe and has less fame. The point is that McEnroe emitted more squawks per match than probably any other player, and the squawk index is more important to the public than the win index.

Can this letter please be taken as a nomination of Simkin and Roychowdhury for an Ig Nobel prize, for taking science into areas where it has difficulty breathing?

Sevenoaks, Kent, UK