Talk:Erdős number
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Why is there a link to "Umlaut"? In fact the 4th character in Erdos' name is not the ö (o-umlaut, ö) mentioned on the Umlaut page.
ö has two dots above the o, while Erdos has a "long Umlaut", which looks more or less like two acute accents close to each other, but the Umlaut page does not mention it. Aleph4 12:17, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There is an Erdos Number of 5 on sale at ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3189039958 . This is too ephemeral to put into the article yet, I think, but maybe once the auction is over it might be worth a mention. --Zero 23:04, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- The link is now dead and should probably be removed from the article
Since the location of the Paul Erdos article no longer has an umlaut (see Talk:Paul Erdos for discussion), I think that for consistency this article should live at Erdos number. --Saforrest 23:03, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
- Done.
- Urhixidur 01:54, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)
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[edit] Not just mathematicians
There seems to be some disagreement about the scope and applicability of Erdos numbers. I removed the explicit references to "mathematicians" in the definition, then someone restored it, and now we're back to the more generic "authors". I'd just like to point out that many physicists and computer scientists have Erdos numbers. For example, our own article on the physicist Brian Greene mentions the fact that he has both an Erdos number and a Bacon number. I would imagine that academics in many other fields have Erdos numbers as well. In fact, the whole point of the concept is to illustrate the small world phenomenon, so artificially restricting it to the even smaller world of mathematics defeats the purpose. --MarkSweep 19:22, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
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- I noticed the following sentence in the article: A small number of people are connected to both Erdős and Bacon and thus have a finite Erdős-Bacon number. Wouldn't that small number be either 0 or else everybody in the union of both graphs? (which would in fact then be the same graph, with a different specified root)--Ramsey2006 16:01, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Never mind...different criteria for the edges. --Ramsey2006 16:03, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
- The concept is not restricted to mathematicians, but it is restricted to "mathematical papers", as the definition says. So Brian Greene may well have an Erdos number, if he coauthored a mathematical paper. As to it being "arbitrary", of course it is, all definitions are arbitrary. Erdos number could have been defined to include say any kind of published material, not just mathematics, but it wasn't. The article merely reflects that original choice. In my experience, the definition given in the article correctly describes how the term is currently understood and used. If you think that the article incorrectly defines Erdos number, I would have to see some reliable source for this notion, before I could agree with it. Paul August ☎ 19:58, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
http://www.oakland.edu/enp/readme.html "There is an edge between vertices u and v if u and v have published at least one mathematics article together. (There is no reason to restrict this to the field of mathematics, of course.)" This is further clarified: "Our criterion for inclusion of an edge between vertices u and v is some research collaboration between them resulting in a published work. Any number of additional co-authors is permitted. " Also see: http://www.oakland.edu/enp/erdpaths.html The definition used by the Erdos Number Project, although not "official" in an academic or bureaucratic sense, is well-established and does seem to include physicists and biologists. A note on the end indicates that a peace manifesto coauthored by Einstein, and reproduced in the New York Times, assigned Einstein a 2 and the other to-be-Nobelist collaborators a 3.
[edit] Do Wikipedia articles count?
Does any Wikipedia article count as a mathematical paper? --Army1987 22:01, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
- Definitely not. Wikipedia is encyclopedic; it contains only things that have already been thought.
- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.122.243.160 (talk • contribs).
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- Rats --h2g2bob 21:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
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- Ok, this makes me wonder: which Wikipedia articles has Erdős edited? 70.55.69.5 23:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
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- He hasn't, so far as I know. But McKay has edited this talk page, so I guess that my adding this edit bumps me up from 3 to 2 ;-p --Ramsey2006 08:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Not exactly an Erdős number...
Although I don't have an actual Erdős number, and probably never will, I have studied small amounts of computer science and mathematics under someone who took a combinatorics course (in computer science) under Ralph G. Stanton (who has Erdős number 2). CanadaGirl 12:07, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
- Courses don't count, I'm afraid. If they did, I'd have an Erdős number by virtue of this guy. --Saforrest
[edit] Average of 5?
From the article: "...the average is less than 5, and almost everyone with a finite Erdős number has a number less than 8." Of course, the average is not less than 5, since many people have an infinite Erdős number. Among those with finite, what is the source for the average being less than 5? Perhaps it should be median? I am inclined to delete the sentence if there is not a source. (Cj67 21:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC))
- The Erdos number project analysed the data from Math Reviews. I added a few words to the article. --Aleph4 22:14, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Gauss-Minkowski - just ain't gonna work
I'm sorry, but this just doesn't cut it:
- However, according to MathSciNet Carl Friedrich Gauss (born 1777) has Erdős numbers 4 as follows: Gauss – Hermann Minkowski – Albert Einstein – Ernst Gabor Straus – Erdős. The connection between Gauss and Minkowski is a collection of essays containing separate works of both authors.
Gauss died in 1855. Minkowski was born in 1864. So, there is no way they could in any real sense of "co-author" co-author anything. Having Gauss & Minkowski's works collected in the same volume does not count in any way as a collaboration between the two, but merely a decision of later editors..... So I will delete this bit. --SJK 11:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
- Agreed. McKay 13:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Infinity is not a number. If a person doesn't have a chain of coauthors linking them to Erdős, you can say their Erdős number is infinite or say that it's undefined. Erdős number and finite Erdős number are synonyms. --Awis 06:15, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I've just realized that my Erdös number is 3. I have published with Gilles Brassard. Hugo Dufort 03:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Concise and meaningful language
This article keeps using the term 'finite' to describe Erdős numbers. I think this is a bit ridiculous, even more so to say that if a person doesn't have a chain of co-authors linking them to Erdős that their Erdős number is infinite! What is the point in such language when it doesn't serve to convey a concise meaning? Far better to say in more concise and explanatory fashion that they either have an Erdős number or they don't.
The article also talks at one stage about the earliest person to have a *positive* finite Erdős number. This is even more ridiculous since by definition there is no such thing as a negative Erdős number. I have to wonder about the motivation to embellish the language with such pointless words.
- I agree with you about the "positive". As for "infinite", the problem is that more than one definition of "Erdős number" is going around and both definitions are mixed up in the article. In one version, some people have an Erdős number and some don't. In the other version, everyone has an Erdős number but some of them are "infinite" (a phrase never defined precisely, but the whole thing is informal). My recollection of the way combinatorialists talked about it when Erdős was still alive is that the second version was more popular. It is also the definition used in the quasi-official Erdős number project [1]. So I propose writing the whole article in that fashion, with a passing mention that some people prefer "not existing" over "infinite". McKay (Erdős number 1) 03:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Pronunciation
Would someone who is familiar with IPA please add the pronunciation according to it? Most people aren't familiar with Hungarian and will mispronounce the name. -Emiellaiendiay 07:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] why?
can someone explain why erdos was chosen, and why it is considered so important? I'm struggling to see how having a high Erdos number is in any way "good" or worthy of any note whatsoever. Same with the Kevin Bacon thing. May I suggest a football one for Liam Brady?
). Got a 61 in his course though (not due to lack of effort). - 212.247.170.12
