{"id":121,"date":"2004-04-27T08:44:05","date_gmt":"2004-04-27T08:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/121"},"modified":"2004-04-27T08:44:05","modified_gmt":"2004-04-27T08:44:05","slug":"buy-an-erdos-number-on-ebay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/121","title":{"rendered":"Buy an Erd\u00f6s number on eBay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only three more days to buy an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a> on eBay!<\/p>\n

For those not in-the-know, the late great Paul Erd\u00f6s was a prolific mathematician and collaborator, which has made him something of the Kevin Bacon<\/a> of the mathematics world. Erd\u00f6s has an Erd\u00f6s number of zero, any of his 200+ coauthors have an Erd\u00f6s number of one, anyone who has coauthored a paper with one of them has an Erd\u00f6s number of two, and so on. Now William Tozier<\/a>, who has an Erd\u00f6s number of 4, is selling his collaboration and thus an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a> on eBay. Current high bid is $364.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing to me is that the price doesn’t seem to be following scarcity in this case. According to the Erd\u00f6s Number Project<\/a>, of the roughly 253,000 people who have collaborated on papers listed in the database of the American Mathematical Society’s Mathematical Reviews (MR)<\/a>, over 80% have an Erd\u00f6s number, with the mode (most people) and median (mid-point) having an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a>. (Heck, even I<\/b> have an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a>, and I’m not a mathematician.) You’d think the real prize would be to collaborate with R.G. Kamalov, who can boast 15 steps in his shortest path to Erd\u00f6s and thus the largest finite Erd\u00f6s number identified by the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only three more days to buy an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a> on eBay!<\/p>\n

For those not in-the-know, the late great Paul Erd\u00f6s was a prolific mathematician and collaborator, which has made him something of the Kevin Bacon<\/a> of the mathematics world. Erd\u00f6s has an Erd\u00f6s number of zero, any of his 200+ coauthors have an Erd\u00f6s number of one, anyone who has coauthored a paper with one of them has an Erd\u00f6s number of two, and so on. Now William Tozier<\/a>, who has an Erd\u00f6s number of 4, is selling his collaboration and thus an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a> on eBay. Current high bid is $364.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing to me is that the price doesn’t seem to be following scarcity in this case. According to the Erd\u00f6s Number Project<\/a>, of the roughly 253,000 people who have collaborated on papers listed in the database of the American Mathematical Society’s Mathematical Reviews (MR)<\/a>, over 80% have an Erd\u00f6s number, with the mode (most people) and median (mid-point) having an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a>. (Heck, even I<\/b> have an Erd\u00f6s number of 5<\/a>, and I’m not a mathematician.) You’d think the real prize would be to collaborate with R.G. Kamalov, who can boast 15 steps in his shortest path to Erd\u00f6s and thus the largest finite Erd\u00f6s number identified by the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}