Talk:Paul Erdős

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Contents 1 Archive 2 Suggestions for New Material 2.1 His Mother 2.1.1 Names of his Family Members 2.2 Fields Medal 2.3 Pictures 3 Edward Teller 4 Vázsonyi 5 Quotation Attributed to Alfréd Rényi 6 Discussion about Pronunciation 7 Umlaut is not Double Accute accent 8 I'm not sure I agree with most recent move of this page 9 C. C. Rousseau Article for Deletion 10 Diacritics again 11 Regarding Work After Death of His Mother 12 Erdos number distribution 13 Use of adjectives to describe Erdos 14 Amphetamines story 15 Version 0.5 Nomination 16 Notes 17 Why?

[edit] Archive

Archive of discussions about the article's title - I created this archive to house material that no longer is relevant given the articles move to "Paul Erdős" Shawn M. O'Hare 09:36, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for New Material

[edit] His Mother

I think his relationship with his mother should also be mentioned --Xamedes

[edit] Names of his Family Members

If anyone nedded the information, his mother's name was Anna, his father was Lajos, and his 2 sisters who both died while he was being born were named Klàra and Magda.--Puckeater8 02:50, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fields Medal

Perhaps something should be said about Erdos and the Fields medal. --Anon

[edit] Pictures

I would love to see some more pictures of him, earlier in life. Some from his 20s when he became a doctor would be really cool to see, but even some from his 40s or 50s would be nice.

[edit] Edward Teller

Calling Edward Teller "remarkable thinker" is like calling Adolf Hitler "remarkable leader". Is this the right word? He was "renowned" in his time, that much is neutral, but it probably implies admiration to say "remarkable".

[edit] Vázsonyi

I don' t understand how you can site Paul Hoffmans book "The man who loved only numbers" and not include Andrew Vázsonyi in the article. He was one of Erdos' good friends before WW2. --Puckeater8 22:41, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quotation Attributed to Alfréd Rényi

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

I've also seen this attributed to Alfred Renyi instead of Erdős. Does anyone know for sure which is correct? --Zundark, Sunday, April 7, 2002

There seems to be some confusion as to who said it (I've seen it written that Erdős was quoting Renyi but more often that Erdős said it, but Renyi's autobiography claims it ... so I put in a fudge factor) DavidWBrooks 17:13 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion about Pronunciation

On the pronunciation: It said "Erd-ish" before. Hoffman's book says "Air-dish". Both are wrong. Of course it is difficult to express a foreign pronunciation in terms of English given that English lacks the exact sounds required. However, a fair approximation is that the first syllable is like "air" except that the "r" is rolled slightly. The second syllable is like "dersh". The long accent makes the second syllable long. Stress is on the first syllable. My authority for this is that I asked him. --Zero 05:27, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I confirm (being a Hungarian) :). I'm not strong on SAMPA but I try to create a Hunagrian - SAMPA - IPA chart on hu:SAMPA Magyar nyelvhez which should help in the future pron. guides. So far you may see that it's transscripted as "errd9:S" in SAMPA (except if I figured it wrong; I can't write IPA here because Opera can't translate UTF8 input to 8859-1 webpages). --grin 08:26, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The problem is that "dersh" works only for certain accents. In particular, it's highly misleading for the large majority of the population of the U.S. and almost the whole population of Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, for whom "dersh" means something with a /r/ sound in it. I'm going to try to clarify it. —JerryFriedman 20:49, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Umlaut is not Double Accute accent

This page should remain under the title "Paul Erdos", not "Paul Erdös". The man's name is not written with an umlaut, but with a double acute. They may look similar but they ain't the same diacritical! --Urhixidur 04:10, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we can't delete Paul Erdos to allow the move because of the famous "block-compression" problem. Maybe try again in a few months. Otherwise we could delete it and merge page histories. Actually, the entire page history between March 31 2002 and April 17 2004 seems to be missing... somebody made it a copyvio at some point and the Paul Erdös page got deleted along with all its history, apparently. --Curps 04:17, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was hoping to find a discussion about the man or his work. Instead it's just an argument about how to spell his name "properly". How sad. =scv

Wikipedia talk pages are not for discussing the topic of the article, but for discussing the article itself. --Zero 23:40, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I'm not sure I agree with most recent move of this page

I'm not sure I agree with the move of this page from "Paul Erdős" to "Pál Erdős (especially after I've been going around fixing hudreds of links as a result of the move from "Paul Erdos" to Paul Erdős". --Paul August ☎ June 29, 2005 21:17 (UTC)

I am using a Windows PC right now with a recent version of Internet Explorer, and the final vowel does not appear. I think we should not use a character in the title which does not display in one of the most common software configurations. --Jonathunder 22:26, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

I think fundamentally the argument is going to be: Wikipedia is not UScentric. While there is some merit to that argument, there are pitfalls too. I personally think the article should be spelled the way he was known. Perhaps we ought to search his publications for reference? TheChief (PowWow) 23:22, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

He was know, in English, as Paul. --Paul August ☎ 23:57, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Spelling it in a way most browsers can display correctly so that most readers can read it is also a consideration, and I don't think there is anything "UScentric" about that. Jonathunder 16:12, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

Of course you don't, because you are I assume from the US? There is the popular belief that the US is the internet. While not true, there is also some merit to the argument, especially given that this is the english wikipedia and such accents don't exist in english. I suggest a straw poll. --TheChief (PowWow) 17:46, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The accent business is only a secondary consideration. The determining factor is which name is the most common version of the spelling of his name in English, in conformity with Wikipedian policy (see WP:UE). As far as I know the consensus on Wikipedia has been that that spelling is "Paul Erdős", not "Paul Erdos" and not "Pál Erdős". This agrees with my experience. By the way (not that it really matters, but I get so few chances to work this into the conversion ;-), my Erdős number is 3, so I know where of I speak, somewhat. --Paul August ☎ 19:23, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

His name in English (not specifically the United States) is "Paul Erdos" or "Paul Erdös", not "Paul Erdős" or "Pál Erdős". (And my Erdös number is 1 <grin> -- and I actually saw him print his name for the audience in a lecture, once. Definitely Paul Erdös). (I hope all those "ö" characters are the same.) Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the Open Directory Project also selected "Paul Erdös" as the name of the category -- individual sites about him are titled the same way that site refers to him. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:22, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] C. C. Rousseau Article for Deletion

This article lists C. C. Rousseau as a collaborator of Paul Erdős, but gives no details. I suggest those who are familiar with this collaboration contribute to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C. C. Rousseau, regarding the signficance of the collaboration, if any. Also, I suggest the collaboration (if and only if signficant) be explained here, or in C. C. Rousseau. --rob 07:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritics again

There's absolutely no reason to use an umlaut. If the correct diacritic can't be displayed, it's better to use none at all. There aren't different "levels" of diacritics, like a proper double accute accent is the best but an umlaut is "almost as good". That's silly. It's like using `backticks' instead of proper quotes. Either use the correct character or its closest ASCII equivalent, not some non-ASCII character that might be a little more widespread and looks sort of like it. —Keenan Pepper 06:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

What? It isn't just about aesthetics, you know. Why in the world would you want to hide this page from someone who knows it has an umlaut in it, and enters "Paul Erdös" in a search engine?

None at all is better? You thing people are better off with a little square or a question mark? Or maybe even really nothing, just "Paul Erds"? You are strange.

Google	hits
"Paul Erdős"	192,000
"Paul Erdös"	177,000
"Paul Erdos"	192,000
AltaVista	hits
"Paul Erdős"	1,740
"Paul Erdös"	71,400
"Paul Erdos"	145,000

The ö is, of course, part of all the extensions of ASCII. It works in all browsers using English. Note the two-digit Unicode numbers, U+00D6 Ö and U+00F6 ö.

Even aesthetically, there is a problem, of course. Many people have seen, and some of us remember making, an umlauted o on a typewriter by overstriking it with the " character. So visually, even upon seeing the character in Erdős, a great many people, even if they see a little longer squiggles above the o, are not going to realize that this is a different character, rather than simply a different font.

Face it. Hungarian isn't really a well known language. The letter ö, on the other hand, is familiar to most English speakers, because the languages in which it is used are closer relatives of our language. And if Hungary's designers had any sense at all, they wouldn't try to distinguish two different letters in their language as Ö and Ő, so it's no wonder nobody bothers to try to learn it. --Gene Nygaard 06:57, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Want another good reason? Take a look at book titles such as [this one. --Gene Nygaard 07:09, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm letting you have it your way because I really don't care that much, but I'd like to point out a few things.

• It just kills me that your edit summary for reverting is so, don't get in a revert war.

"Why in the world would you want to hide this page from someone who knows it has an umlaut in it, and enters "Paul Erdös" in a search engine?"

• Um, Paul Erdös is still a redirect to here, because it's a common misspelling of his name. A redirect is good, mentioning it in the article is bad.

"None at all is better? You thing people are better off with a little square or a question mark? Or maybe even really nothing, just "Paul Erds"? You are strange."

• No, you completely misinterpreted what I said. The letter o is not a diacritic, it's a letter. So Paul Erdős with no diacritics is Paul Erdos, not Paul Erds.
• What is popular is not always right. Google statistics and whether or not Hungarian is a "well-known language" are irrelevant.

"The ö is, of course, part of all the extensions of ASCII."

• Right. Extensions. That means it's not an element of the standard ASCII character set.

"Hungary's designers"

• WTF? Last time I checked, Hungarian was a natural langauge, not a conlang.
• BTW, my grandmother's Hungarian, you jerk. —Keenan Pepper 00:02, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

In regard the table, I suspect Google disregards the diacritic in "ő". I can't imagine that many webmasters knowing how to generate it. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding Work After Death of His Mother

I noticed that a few small things I added were reverted, regarding his 'devotion' to mathematics after the death of his mother. Mayhap I could rewrite it a bit better but I feel it is important to point out Erdős' deep connection to his mother, and how the intensity of his work in mathematics increased after her death. He, like others, sought a sort of solace in the subject. --Shawn M. O'Hare 20:25, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Erdos number distribution

"Some have estimated that 90% of the world's active mathematicians have an Erdős number smaller than 10 (not surprising in the light of the small world phenomenon)."

I actually find this extremely surprising -- in the other direction. I would estimate that 99.9% of the world's active mathematicians have a number of 6 or less. I'm not even a mathematician and the very first paper I wrote gave me a number of 4. I would really like to see a citation for this claim. Arvindn 05:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I'm only now completing my first paper, but it gives me an Erdos number of 3. Not that anecdotal evidence means anything, but I'm fairly sure that there are very few people with finite Erdos numbers greater than 6 or 7.

Let's say that "active mathematician" means someone who published at least one mathematics paper. The outcome of percolation theory (also used in things like the spread of epidemics) is that the graph of collaborations has one huge component with smallish diameter, plus lots of tiny components. It is clearly true for this example. The huge component includes Erdős and nearly everyone in that component will be not far from him (10 sounds too large but I'm not sure; I'd guess 6 or 7). The tiny components include people who only ever published without coauthors, pairs of people who only published together or alone, and so on. The number of such tiny components must be very large so they might together make up a nontrivial fraction (10% say) of all mathematicians. Someone probably compiled actual statistics on this. McKay (Erdős number 1).

Yes yes, that's why I've said only among those with finite Erdos number. I know I've seen the statistics somewhere, and I'm fairly sure that most people fall within 7. I really wish I remembered who I heard that from though. 149.43.x.x 12:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I just took a look at Erdos number (should really have done that before) and it gives a smaller bound: "almost everyone with a finite Erdős number has a number less than 8". Therefore the less than 10 statement should either be deleted from this article or replaced with the statement from Erdos number. Arvindn 23:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I replaced it with 8, which now makes it the same as the Erdos Number page. LouScheffer 00:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of adjectives to describe Erdos

A contributor has questioned the use of "immensely prolific" and "famously eccentric". However, to say Erdos was a prolific mathematician is wrong in the same way that describing an Olympic champion as "an excellent athlete" is wrong. While true, this gives (in both cases) the very wrong impression that there are lots of others who are equally prolific, or equally athletic. You could replace it with "the most prolific mathematician of the last two centuries", which is verifiable, but much more wordy. So I think "immensely" should stay.

Also, "famously eccentric" is also supported by the evidence. If you search for "eccentric mathematician" (with or without quotes) half your references will be to Erdos. To me, this more than qualifies as "famously eccentric".

Much of this is covered later in the article, but since many folks will only read the first line, it should be a summary. "Immensely prolific and famously eccentric" are 99 percent of what any non-mathematician will take away from this article.

See the obituary from the Washington Post for an overview of his life that agrees with these general themes. LouScheffer 17:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amphetamines story

I believe I recall that Graham was the one who bet Erdős over amphetamines. Can others confirm this? Orcrist 22:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is correct, too, but there must be a written reference somewhere. LouScheffer 00:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is in "the man who loved only numbers", page 14. I'll change the main page. LouScheffer 17:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Version 0.5 Nomination

Failed on quality: Not comprehensive. Could use sections on: Awards, Family, Education, as well as needing more references. Lastly, border-line on the importance factors. Chuck^(척뉴넘) 07:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notes

Can somebody make a link to Dennis Gabor, a physicist featured in (the English language version of) Wikipedia, and mentioned in the Notes, but with his name spelled in Hungarian? Thanks!

[edit] Why?

Why did Paul Erdös call children "Epsilons", and how did he mean that? Michael 16:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

As a student of mathematics I can guess that he called them epsilons because in mathematical analysis the Greek letter epsilon is usually used to denote arbitrarily small numbers. It's the sort of pun only a mathematician would laugh at. Tomgreeny 17:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)