Everyone knows about the Bacon number or about the six degrees of Kevin Bacon!
But do you know ERDOS number!?
I know; you ‘forgot’ what is Bacon number or for that matter who is Kevin Bacon! Which is why you must read my blogs! Kidding!
So Kevin Bacon is the guy from Footloose! He had a show in which celebrities were asked to link themselves to Kevin Bacon!
Now Kevin himself would have a Bacon number of 0! But someone like Tom Cruise who acted with him in A Few Good men would have the number 1!
Now we come to the ERDOS number!
Just like the Bacon Number for celebrities you have the ERDOS number for mathematicians!
The lower the number; the more respected or ‘acknowledged’ you are as a mathematician!
So Erdős numbers measure the “collaborative distance” between researchers and influential Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős based on co-authorship of mathematical papers.
Just like the Bacon numbers; Erdős has a number of 0!
co-authors have 1, and those who co-authored with a “1” have a 2, creating a collaborative network!
Basically an Erdős number is the smallest number of steps (co-authorship) needed to connect a person to Paul Erdős!
Why Erdos you may ask? I can already see your ERDOS number slipping just for asking that question!
With over 1,475 academic papers, Erdős collaborated with hundreds of scientists, making the number a widely known “badge of pride” in mathematics!
The Structure:
0: Paul Erdős.
1: People who co-authored a paper directly with Paul Erdős.
2: People who co-authored with an Erdős number 1 person.
A low Erdös number is a point of pride among mathematicians. There is, of course, only one person with an Erdös number of 0 (i.e., Erdös); the most common Erdös number is 5 (with 87,760 mathematicians), with the frequency declining with a power-law distribution after that.
Many mathematicians have low numbers, and some, like IT researcher Stefan Szeider, have an Erdős number of 2!
This is not limited to mathematicians though! You even have Famous Examples!
Like Actress Natalie Portman has an Erdős number of 5, while former NFL player John Urschel has a 4!
By the way there is also a collab! The Erdős-Bacon Number!
This combines the Erdős number with a “Bacon number” showcasing connections between academic collaboration and film!
Erdős-Bacon Number shows connection between academic and entertainment world! If you have a low score in both then not only are you intelligent, you are also famous!
There are people with both a low Bacon number and a low Erdös
number!
The record, 3, is shared by two people. There’s Daniel Kleitman
(who published with Erdös and appeared in the movie Good Will Hunting
as an MIT mathematician).
And there’s mathematician Bruce Reznick (also a 1-Erdös-er who, oddly, was an extra in what was apparently an appallingly bad movie, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 8 percent, called Pretty Maids All in A Row!).
By the way you also have something called the Flacco number! But then that is a slog…I mean blog for another number…err…day!
So much talk about celebrity! Am sure you would have seen this one but do not know his name! Its Bharat Kapoor! But do not ask me what is his Bacon Number!
Subh ratri!
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