Friday, November 24, 2006

Erdos-Bacon numbers

I suppose this was inevitable.

I just noticed a wikipedia entry for Erdos-Bacon numbers, which is defined as the sum of one's Erdos and Bacon numbers.

Ah, mathematicians and their generalizations...

Anyway, I need to add to my goals to make my Erdos-Bacon number finite. My Erdos number has been verified to be at most 4. Mathscinet now has a tool that allows one to compute one's Erdos number using papers that are in their database. (Of course, one can have a shorter path via papers that aren't listed.) This path is as follows:

I published a paper (multiple papers, actually) with Boris Malomed, who published a paper with Yehuda Band, who published a paper with Peter Salamon, who published a paper with Paul Erdos. (Today was the first time I had checked. The last time I checked, which was before this automated database was available and just before my first paper with Boris was officially published, the shortest path about which I knew had length 5.)


Also, starting with this entry, I have switched over to Blogger Beta.

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