Comments on: Degrees of separation

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:26:41 +0000

Matt, Paul Erdos was a mathematician who went from place to place staying with mathematicians and co-authoring papers with them. The Erdos number reflects how close you are to collaborating with Erdos. It is calculated as follows: If you are Erdos, your number is 0. If you have co-authored a paper with someone whose Erdos number is n, your Erdos number is at most n+1. Inductive closure clause: Your Erdos number is the highest number consistent with the above. My Erdos number is also 3, if you count forthcoming publications (Nuel Belnap-Joel Spencer-Erdos; see this page, via Eszter). Before that I think I probably had a high but finite Erdos number but I have no way of calculating it. As the generations pass, I think the numbers will creep up very slowly, as there become fewer people with number 1 to collaborate with, then fewer with number 2, etc. But we won’t be around to see that happen.

By: eszter

eszter — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:23:21 +0000

There were a few links in the post that lead to relevant info, but here’s a direct link to an explanation: http://personalwebs.oakland.edu/~grossman/readme.html

By: matt

matt — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:05:16 +0000

At the risk of seeming dumb, what’s an erdos number?

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 20:56:51 +0000

I don’t have an Erdös number yet, but if a couple of written but unpublished papers get published I believe I’ll have an Erdös number of 6. Since philosophers tend as a rule to write very few joint authored papers, there could be some very long Erdös chains winding through our part of the world.

By: Joseph O'Rourke

Joseph O'Rourke — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 11:53:41 +0000

I am along the path from Eszter to Erdos that establishes her Erdos number. With Erdos now collaborating only with the angels, I cannot lower my number below 2. But Eszter can still decrement. In general the numbers drift downward over time, heading toward the source. It will be interesting to see if another mathematician X emerges with enough respect and activity to warrant the honor of the community tracking X-numbers.

By: eszter

eszter — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 09:33:55 +0000

I reposted it on my blog signed as a joint post, but that required creating a separate account. Such an approach is too tedious for a group blog with 15 members though. There are too many possible permutations for joint posts.