Half

Hm. Maybe MC knows something Stephen Hawking missed, as suggested by his (relatively famous) quote:

Although equations are a concise and accurate way of describing mathematical ideas, they frighten most people. When I wrote a popular book recently, I was advised that each equation I included would half the sales. I include on equation, Einstein's famous equation, E=mc². Maybe, I would have twice as many copies without it.

Maybe someone can construct an empirical test of this phenomenon?

And #1 hit record or not, shouldn't this have come out in 2005?