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The Stephen Hawking Index (SHI)

Regis Nisengwe -

If you want to know whether a given book will be difficult to understand, you can check its  Stephen Hawking Index (SHI). This index is a metric used to determine how difficult a book is to read. The index is determined by measuring the frequency of difficult words it contains. A lower SHI score denotes an easy text to read whereas a higher score indicates a more challenging text to read.

Typically, the SHI is used for scientific works. However, it is possible to use it for non-scientific books. As I read non-scientific books sometimes, I was curious to find out which non-scientific books have the highest SHI. Below are some of the non-scientific books with high SHI:

  1. "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce -  SHI score: 92.2
  2. "Ulysses" by James Joyce - SHI score of 44.9.
  3. "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon - SHI: 30.9
  4. "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace - 30.1
  5. "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner - SHI score of 22.4