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Erdős–Bacon number

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Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#11

Post by whalesalad »

My favorite Erdős trivia is that he was an avid amphetamine user.

    Erdős’s friends worried about his drug use, and in 1979 Graham bet Erdős 
    $500 that he couldn’t stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdős accepted, 
    and went cold turkey for a complete month. Erdős’s comment at the end of the 
    month was “You’ve showed me I’m not an addict. But I didn’t get any work done. 
    I’d get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no 
    ideas, just like an ordinary person. You’ve set mathematics back a month.” 
    He then immediately started taking amphetamines again
My man.

https://www.untruth.org/~josh/math/Paul%20Erd%F6s%20bio-rev2...

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#12

Post by ikeboy »

selectodude wrote: post #9
ashton314 wrote: post #2

It took me a while to understand xkcd #599[1]; now I'm wondering what the current lower bound on someone's Erdős–Bacon Number is today. Anyone know? [1]: https://www.xkcd.com/599/

Well, Erdos is dead, so you'd have to be in a movie with one of the two people who have a EB number of 3, giving you an EB number of 5. Otherwise, if one of the people who have published a paper with Erdos were in a movie with Kevin Bacon, that would lower their number to two. Somebody born today couldn't do better than 5, and they'd have to move quickly. Kleitman is in his late 80s and Reznik is 66.

Someone born today could co-author a paper with anyone who co-authored a paper with Erdos, and also appear in a film with Kevin Bacon, giving them a EB number of 3.

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#13

Post by boulos »

Syzygies wrote: post #7

Erdős–Bacon numbers got their start when Simon Singh (reference 1 archived) was having lunch with me, and I observed that mine was 4. He writes for a living, so he wrote a column. Oddly, I was long ago written out of this Wikipedia article. There is a reasonable ambiguity about Erdős numbers, as people do publish posthumously with him, based on collaborations while he was alive. There is also an ambiguity about Bacon…

Thanks for the background! Why did you two choose to make it the sum of the two scores (so L1 distance) rather than L-inf/max?

It seems to me that you'd want to have the minimum value be a 1, representing someone who co-authored a paper with Erdos and appeared in a film with Bacon. The sum will always be at least two though (whatever I guess), but that also (2,2) isn't that far away from the "origin" such that it feels wrong to call it 4 (and similarly 2,4 being 6 seems funny).

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#14

Post by freepor »

Syzygies wrote: post #7

Erdős–Bacon numbers got their start when Simon Singh (reference 1 archived) was having lunch with me, and I observed that mine was 4. He writes for a living, so he wrote a column. Oddly, I was long ago written out of this Wikipedia article. There is a reasonable ambiguity about Erdős numbers, as people do publish posthumously with him, based on collaborations while he was alive. There is also an ambiguity about Bacon…

What role did you play in A Beautiful Mind? I.e. who are you?

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#15

Post by ejcx »

I’ve never heard of Erdos Bacon numbers. My university professor Dr Tjaden pioneered the Bacon Number and it was a pretty obscure claim to fame he had.

I’m guessing his Erdos Bacon number was 3+1=4. He appeared in a documentary with Kevin Bacon about the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, and has a peer at the university with an Erdos of 3. What a world we live in!

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#16

Post by ceocoder »

freepor wrote: post #14
Syzygies wrote: post #7

Erdős–Bacon numbers got their start when Simon Singh (reference 1 archived) was having lunch with me, and I observed that mine was 4. He writes for a living, so he wrote a column. Oddly, I was long ago written out of this Wikipedia article. There is a reasonable ambiguity about Erdős numbers, as people do publish posthumously with him, based on collaborations while he was alive. There is also an ambiguity about Bacon…

What role did you play in A Beautiful Mind? I.e. who are you?

Based on [0] and [1] I'd say Professor Dave Bryer.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20121112081753/http://www.telegr...

[1] https://simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/erdo...

[2] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101413/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t41

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#18

Post by Syzygies »

ceocoder wrote: post #16
freepor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What role did you play in A Beautiful Mind? I.e. who are you?

Based on [0] and [1] I'd say Professor Dave Bryer. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20121112081753/http://www.telegr... [1] https://simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/erdo... [2] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101413/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t41

Yes, Dave Bayer. I was the math consultant, but it's like joining the circus, once inside you do what you can. For one example, when I was a kid my Mom left out a Time Life book on drugs, and my brother and I were fascinated by the various photographs of spiderwebs made under the influence of different recreational drugs. That idea helped shape the "mad shack" in the film. I was also Russell Crowe's hand double, and I had a speaking part in the pen ceremony.

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#19

Post by grzm »

tomc1985 wrote: post #17

What is that double-accented o called and how is it pronounced?

For pronunciation, one resource is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowels

That particular diacritic mark is a double accent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_acute_accent#Hungarian

> "In Hungarian, the double acute is thought of as the letter having both an umlaut and an acute accent"

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#20

Post by istillwritecode »

Syzygies wrote: post #7

Erdős–Bacon numbers got their start when Simon Singh (reference 1 archived) was having lunch with me, and I observed that mine was 4. He writes for a living, so he wrote a column. Oddly, I was long ago written out of this Wikipedia article. There is a reasonable ambiguity about Erdős numbers, as people do publish posthumously with him, based on collaborations while he was alive. There is also an ambiguity about Bacon…

Len Adleman was listed as an advisor in the credits of the movie "Sneakers". Is that a connection from the math world to the Bacon world?
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