Six degrees of separation
Tue 25 Apr 2006 09:08 AM
Acquiring a finite Erdős number was icing on the cake when I coauthored with Craig Callender a few years back. Now, by way of the MathSciNet Collaboration Calculator, I have been able to confirm that my finite Erdős number is at most 6.
Erdős (0) coauthored with Ernst Gabor Straus (1), who coauthored with Peter Gabriel Bergmann (2), who coauthored with Gerrit J. Smith (3), who coauthored with Robert Weingard (4), who coauthored with Craig Callender (5), who coauthored with me (6).
Since Bergmann coauthored with Albert Einstein, it puts me only five steps away from Albert. In an unrelated statistic, Einstein was the first scientist that came to mind for 9 out of 20 students in my Understanding Science class yesterday when I asked them to think of a scientist.
Comments
from: Greg
Tue 25 Apr 2006 04:32 PM
Hi P.D. --
Quick question: why do you say FINITE Erdos number?
from: P.D.
Tue 25 Apr 2006 09:34 PM
I picked up the locution from the the Erdös Number Project website. They say: "If there is no chain of co-authorships connecting someone with Erdös, then that person’s Erdös number is said to be infinite."
I guess this is so Erdös Number is a well-defined function on the set of people.