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Erdős–Bacon number

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Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#21

Post by delhanty »

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?

Not the OP, but I'm guessing that Syzygies is Professor David Allen Bayer. [0][1]

>Bayer was a mathematics consultant for the film A Beautiful Mind, the biopic of John Nash,

"Syzygies" appears to be a reference to a construct in abstract algebra. [2][3]

Dave Bayer is referenced on the version of the Wikipedia page Erdős–Bacon number dated 03:25, 9 February 2013. [4]

>For a time, the person with the lowest known Erdős–Bacon number was Dave Bayer, mathematical consultant to A Beautiful Mind who was on screen in a minor role in the movie. Rance Howard was also in A Beautiful Mind and in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon to give Bayer a Bacon number of 2. Bayer wrote a paper with Persi Diaconis, who has an Erdős number of 1 due to a jointly authored 1977 Stanford University technical report, later published in a 2004 compilation. As such, Bayer's Erdős–Bacon number is 4. ...

But there is a tsunami of deletions [5] by Wikipedia User:Cresix [6] on that day, and the text above plus a table that references Dave Bayer is gone.

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Bayer

[2] https://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/papers/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_syzygy_theorem

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cresix

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#22

Post by c3534l »

whalesalad wrote: post #11

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 pi…

"I'm not a drug addict, I just can't function without drugs. Totally different."

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#23

Post by _hardwaregeek »

whalesalad wrote: post #11

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 pi…

Hanging out with Erdős was probably a ride. He was known for drinking copious amounts of coffee and taking amphetamines non stop. So he probably didn't get a lot of sleep. Now imagine that dude has showed up at your house to live and work with you for at least a few days, but probably a week or two. I wouldn't be surprised if he exhausted a few poor unsuspecting mathematicians.

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#24

Post by freepor »

Syzygies wrote: post #18
ceocoder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Russell Crowe's hand double? Does he have bad hands or something?

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#25

Post by frabert »

freepor wrote: post #24
Syzygies wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Russell Crowe's hand double? Does he have bad hands or something?

Not having seen the movie, I'm guessing there are scenes where Crowe needs to write some math, and it just looked more convicing by letting an actual mathematician do it for him.

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#26

Post by pathsjs »

Syzygies wrote: post #18
ceocoder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 personally want to thank you. As a mathematician, I always dislike the way maths is displayed in most movies. It was very refreshing to see students compute De Rham cohomology and discuss Galois theory (if I recall correctly) in a major Hollywood production.

Then again, "It's my turn" has a proof of the snake lemma in it! :-) (but the scene is much less realistic)

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#28

Post by bb101 »

tomc1985 wrote: post #17

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

It's a long o-umlaut. Pronounced like "err" (thinking) or a stretched out version of "ea" from earth.

Incidentally, Erdős in Hungarian means Forester.

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#29

Post by ta999999171 »

c3534l wrote: post #22
whalesalad wrote: post #11

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 pi…

"I'm not a drug addict, I just can't function without drugs. Totally different."

Some people have unfortunate brain chemistry/homeostasis, and are keen to adjust it.

It's a real thing.

Hard to separate from desiring the pleasure/illness, to be fair.

Re: Erdős–Bacon number

#30

Post by IvyMike »

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.

Somebody films a movie today staring Kevin Bacon and anyone with an Erdős number of 1 and we get a new record holder, E-B number of 2.
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