The fame formula (bollocks)

So there's a book about the PR industry coming out, in which Mark Borkowski (read about him on Wikipedia) tries to make PR look like science. It seems to be utter bollocks. There's an extract in The Guardian. (The Guardian is an odd rag, combining quite sensible stuff (include Ben Goldacre's column) with cringeworthy trash, regularly including horrifying simpering in the media section. Here's a long-ish extract from the extract:

The formula for illustrating the decline in fame from its peak works out as follows:

F(T) = B+P(1/10T+1/2T2)

where:

F is the level of fame;

T is time, measured in three-monthly intervals. So T=1 is after three months, T=2 is after six months, etc. Fame is at its peak when T=0. (Putting T=0 into the equation gives an infinite fame peak, not mathematically accurate, perhaps, but the concept of the level of fame being off the radar is apposite.);

B is a base level of fame that we identified and quantified by analysing the average level of fame in the year before peak. For George Clooney, B would be a large number, but for a fabulous nobody, like a new Big Brother contestant, B is zero;

P is the increment of fame above the base level, that establishes the individual firmly at the front of public consciousness.

This formula fits the data remarkably well, giving a precise numerical value to the 15-month theory: if I put in T=5 (corresponding to 15 months after the peak), it gives F=B+P(1/50+1/50), which works out at F=B+.04P. In other words, up to 96% of the fame-boost achieved at the peak of public attention has been frittered away, and the client or product is almost back to base level.

Ah, right. So division by zero gives you infinity does it? Well, no. Division by zero is a meaningless operation in real number arithmetic, and from what I gather it's a headache trying to define it in just about any other domain.

Quoting Wolfram MathWorld:

To the persistent but misguided reader who insists on asking "What happens if I do divide by zero," Derbyshire (2004, p. 36) provides the slightly flippant but firm and concise response, "You can't. It's against the rules." Even in fields other than the real numbers, division by zero is never allowed (Derbyshire 2004, p. 266)

(Reference: Derbyshire, J. Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics. New York: Penguin, 2004.)

It's bollocks, Jim, just as we know it.