Alessandro Pluchino

Alessandro Pluchino is an associate professor of theoretical physics and mathematical models at Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. He is most well known for his experiments regarding the mathematical models of economics and random chance.
==Biography==
Alessandro Pluchino was born in Catania, Italy. He has shown an interest in mathematical models, statistics, and programming. He uses these skills to make models of events to come to conclusions. He has earned a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Catania, where he now works as an associate professor. He is also an Editorial Board member of scientific journals PlosOne and Entropy.
==Research==
===Economics===
Alessandro Pluchino used computer models to figure out the importance of luck in wealth inequality. He found that most often, people who are talented are outshined economically by those who happen to be lucky. He found that luck is significantly more important than skill in these simulations that most imitate real life.
Alessandro Pluchino also created a dynamic model for tax evasion. In this model, people could choose to evade taxes depending on certain factors and this model confirms the Monte Carlo method which describes using randomness to solve some sort of problem.
===Luck in Sports===
Alessandro Pluchino has examined the impact of luck in several sports, the first of which was the 100m dash. In this experiment, he compared a simulation where absolutely no luck was involved in this discipline as many people believe and the actual results of events. This correlation between the events show that there is a small, but significant difference between the simulations and the actual results. He then used this data to compare to other, less rigorously controlled sports.
After this, Alessandro Pluchino applied this similar method to figure out the importance of luck in fencing. He claims to choose this sport because “randomness is explicitly present in some rules.” By comparing the simulation made without randomness and the actual results, he finds that there is more luck involved than was originally thought to be. The experiment showed that there is likely 55% luck involved and 45% skill. This is heightened by the fact that many fencing tournaments are single elimination meaning that bad luck can cause a fencer to lose the entire tournament.
The most recent sport that Alessandro Pluchino looked at to see the role of luck in was tennis. In this experiment, a computer model was made to test different elements of luck and skill in tennis compared to the actual results of the competition. The closest approximation was that tennis was 80% luck and 20% skill. Tennis is also a single elimination sport in many circumstances and shows that someone could lose a tournament because of primarily luck.
===Disease===
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Alessandro Pluchino researched certain effects of the pandemic on Italy. First, he researched the risk of certain regions of Italy based on previous information about the pollution and populations of the areas. He found that more people were getting sick in northern Italy.
Later, Alessandro Pluchino researched the mobility restrictions due to Covid-19. He created an agent-based model to place different mobility restrictions on people and examine whether it had an effect on the spread of disease. This is highly useful to see whether a government should place mobility restrictions on its people.
Finally, Alessandro Pluchino researched the difference between authoritarianism and democracy in responding to disease. In this study, he made a model where it simulated disease outbreak depending on multiple factors. The study found that greater pluralism doesn’t necessarily correlate with worse performances, but mature political debate is necessary.
==Ig Nobel Prize==
Alessandro Pluchino received the Ig Nobel Prize in 2010 in the category management along with Andrea Rapisarda and Cesare Garofalo. The study showed that companies may be better off promoting people at random which is now called the Peter Principle. It shows that when employees are offered the opportunity to advance at random, they will work to the best of their ability and will offer economic benefits.
Alessandro Pluchino received the Ig Nobel Prize in 2022 in economics with Andrea Rapisarda and Alessio Emanuele Biondo by showing mathematically how luck is a more important factor than skill in economic success, rather, averagely talented people gaining success. This study had a short documentary on it by Marius Mele in 2019 called “A shadow on Meritocracy.”
Alessandro Pluchino is one of 8 people to have List of Ig Nobel Prize winners|received multiple Ig Nobel Prizes with the other 7 being Jacques Benveniste, Joseph Keller, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Andrea Rapisarda, Alexander Lukashenko, David Hu, and Patricia Yang.
Category:People from Catania
Category:Professorships
Category:Italian people