what do serial killers, epileptics and migraineurs have in common?

My husband found the following abstract of an article:

Stochastic modeling of a serial killer
M. V. Simkin, V. P. Roychowdhury
(Submitted on 12 Jan 2012)

We analyze the time pattern of the activity of a serial killer, who during twelve years had murdered 53 people. The plot of the cumulative number of murders as a function of time is of "Devil's staircase" type. The distribution of the intervals between murders (step length) follows a power law with the exponent of 1.4. We propose a model according to which the serial killer commits murders when neuronal excitation in his brain exceeds certain threshold. We model this neural activity as a branching process, which in turn is approximated by a random walk. As the distribution of the random walk return times is a power law with the exponent 1.5, the distribution of the inter-murder intervals is thus explained. We confirm analytical results by numerical simulation.

The researchers also posit that people with epilepsy experience seizures when their brain hits a threshold level of neuronal excitation. We also feel that my migraines are triggered when that neuronal threshold is breached.............just an interesting connection............L

You are so right! Interesting observation...

Love your title!