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- From: alopez-o@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (Alex Lopez-Ortiz)
- Subject: sci.math FAQ: Erdos Number
- Summary: Part 30 of many, New version,
- Originator: alopez-o@neumann.uwaterloo.ca
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- Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 17:16:09 GMT
- Expires: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 09:55:55 GMT
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- Archive-Name: sci-math-faq/erdos
- Last-modified: December 8, 1994
- Version: 6.2
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- Erdos Number
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- Form an undirected graph where the vertices are academics, and an edge
- connects academic X to academic Y if X has written a paper with Y .
- The Erdos number of X is the length of the shortest path in this graph
- connecting X with Erdos.
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- Erdos has Erdos number 0. Co-authors of Erdos have Erdos number 1.
- Einstein has Erdos number 2, since he wrote a paper with Ernst Straus,
- and Straus wrote many papers with Erdos.
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- The Extended Erdos Number applies to co-authors of Erdos. For People
- who have authored more than one paper with Erdos, their Erdos number
- is defined to be 1/# papers-co-authored. Ron Graham has the smallest,
- non-zero, Erdos number.
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- Why people care about it?
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- Nobody seems to have a reasonable answer...
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- Who is Paul Erdos?
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- Paul Erdos is an Hungarian mathematician. He obtained his PhD from the
- University of Manchester and has spent most of his efforts tackling
- "small" problems and conjectures related to graph theory,
- combinatorics, geometry and number theory.
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- He is one of the most prolific publishers of papers; and is also and
- indefatigable traveller.
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- References
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- Caspar Goffman. And what is your Erdos number? American Mathematical
- Monthly, v. 76 (1969), p. 791.
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- _________________________________________________________________
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- alopez-o@barrow.uwaterloo.ca
- Tue Apr 04 17:26:57 EDT 1995
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