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Text File  |  1992-11-13  |  1.1 KB  |  28 lines
  1. Newsgroups: sci.math
  2. Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU!Sunburn.Stanford.EDU!pratt
  3. From: pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt)
  4. Subject: Re: Erdos number
  5. Message-ID: <1992Nov13.071815.29226@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
  6. Sender: news@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU
  7. Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
  8. References: <1992Nov11.001750.12213@mailhost.ocs.mq.edu.au> <1992Nov12.104155.7564@ms.uky.edu> <EIJKHOUT.92Nov12213622@cupid.cs.utk.edu>
  9. Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 07:18:15 GMT
  10. Lines: 16
  11.  
  12. In article <EIJKHOUT.92Nov12213622@cupid.cs.utk.edu> eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:
  13. >>> So, are there any non-mathematicians with such a number? 
  14. >
  15. >With me the case is the other way around: my Erd"os number is three
  16. >through an electronics engineer who co-authored with Richard Guy.
  17. >His two is probably a lower bound, unless Erd"os himself wrote
  18. >about non-mathematical subject.
  19.  
  20. Two counterexamples:
  21.  
  22. 1. On a long train journey Erdos struck up a conversation with the
  23. conductor, who ended up as a coauthor.
  24.  
  25. 2. Don Knuth is a computer scientist.
  26. -- 
  27. Vaughan Pratt              A fallacy is worth a thousand steps.
  28.