Show us your articles! Or what's your Erdos number?

[Pathway]

I just realized that one of my profs last year had an Erdos number of 2. I had the opportunity to proofread a book he was writing (and be credited in the published version for as much), but I didn't do it! Curses! I don't know how close I'll get to a 3 again.

I thought it was a lifetime thing--if you publish seven papers that would get you a 6, and one that would get you a 3, you still get the 3.

[bitwiseshiftleft]

We're somewhat short on actual papers in this thread, so here's a paper I co-authored (on my advisor's website).

[SpitValve]

I just realized that one of my profs last year had an Erdos number of 2. I had the opportunity to proofread a book he was writing (and be credited in the published version for as much), but I didn't do it! Curses! I don't know how close I'll get to a 3 again.

I thought it was a lifetime thing--if you publish seven papers that would get you a 6, and one that would get you a 3, you still get the 3.

But he didn't actually publish with the professor, so he missed out on the chance to get a 3.

[Pathway]

I just realized that one of my profs last year had an Erdos number of 2. I had the opportunity to proofread a book he was writing (and be credited in the published version for as much), but I didn't do it! Curses! I don't know how close I'll get to a 3 again.

I thought it was a lifetime thing--if you publish seven papers that would get you a 6, and one that would get you a 3, you still get the 3.

But he didn't actually publish with the professor, so he missed out on the chance to get a 3.

I didn't say his number was 3. It was a conditional!

[SpitValve]

I didn't say his number was 3. It was a conditional!

ok... the "I thought" bit made me think you were somehow disagreeing with him, and I couldn't quite figure that bit out...

[Stig Hemmer]

Paul Erdös - Marc Kac - Per Hemmer - Stig Hemmer

My father has earned his 2, but I would say my 3 is mostly nepotism.

Mostly on random walks.

Edit: counting is hard, especially with such big numbers.

[charlesfahringer]

If we finish and publish our work from last summer's REU, I'll have a 2:
Paul Erdös -- Neil Calkin -- Charles Fahringer.
I don't know if we'll finish it, though. As a naive young mathematician, I got interested in an unsolved problem (the "least modulus conjecture"), and of course we didn't work on solving it, but on breaking the computer record associated with it. I happen to be not so learned in parallel programming, so other than developing some algorithms for finding covers, I wasn't much help.

[zenten]

I've slept with someone who put up Erdős for a few weeks at her home, does that count?

[FiddleMath]

My paper actually got accepted! Yay!
(in Discrete Mathematics.)

Not bad, seeing as I'm doing mostly programming, nowadays.

If y'all like, I'll show you this technical report I'm working up, too... it's a (really simple) example of an NP-completeness reduction. That, apparently, would've saved my current adviser and a student of his about a month's work on a particular project, had they caught it then.

So, I guess CS theory can be useful... :j

[the keeper]

As an undergrad, I was published in an undergrad journal.
Chaos, The Pentagon, Volume 63, No. 2, 17-24.

The paper had no co-author, but my professor that was overseeing the paper has en Erdos number of (at leakst) 5. Does that mean I have an Erdos number of 6?, or because he wasn't a co-author my number is still undefined?

[Porges]

I assume "colon compliance" means that every paper needs to have a colon in its title to be worth anything. Not sure though.

I took it to be that papers must follow the "<Short, catchy title>: <Long, boring subtitle>" format.

For example:
"Bananas in Space: Extending Fold and Unfold to Exponential Types"

[McHell]

Does that mean I have an Erdos number of 6?, or because he wasn't a co-author my number is still undefined?

Still undefined. The AMS website has an Erdos-calculator, but it looks at only a small set of magazines (e.g. Phys Rev Letters not included after a certain year) that are "hardcore maths" --- giving strange results where some of my definitely more mathematical friends score undefined/infinite where very biological ones have 3 and 4.
Your supervisor having 5 is relatively high... he might have a lower one in an unexpected way.

@StigHemmer: it gives you 3, not 4! The MathSciNet says so!

I note that however few co-authors I have, I'm 5 in 4 different ways (and 4 in one way)... that is, recognized by the AMS calculator only.
Edit: hm, I'm not 4 because that was a chapter in a book --- the chapter is not jointly written, I had counted myself as co-author of the editors.

[arachnophilia]

not being a math student, i have not authored or co-authored any math papers, and thus don't have an erdos number. but i have something cooler:



that's erdos on the paddle. to the left is my father. this picture was taken in 1980 by my mother, before i was even born. i've met erdos on a number of occasions, but i was really too young to remember now. i'm not totally sure what my father's erdos number is, but i could ask. i know at least one person with an erdos number of +1 (bolobas) was on my father's thesis committee.

edit: my father reports that his erdos number is 2, a few different ways.

[ptveite]

I have a math textbook signed by Bela Bolobas.....

[Cexy]

I know a load of people with E number 2, by cirtue of being Bollobas's students. I'm reasonably certain that I won't get any lower than a 3, though.

[gmedina]

...that's erdos on the paddle. to the left is my father. this picture was taken...

Well, since your father's figure seems to be so important to you, tell us more about him and his Erdos number. Maybe we can help you.

[Cexy]

I've slept with someone who put up Erdős for a few weeks at her home, does that count?

Only if she slept with Erdos first, in which case you get an automatic Erdos number of 2. Possibly.

Interestingly, by defining Erdos numbers in this way (and ignoring homosexual relationships, I guess) you would ensure that anyone with an odd Erdos number was female and anyone with an even Erdos number was male. Hmm.

[zenten]

I've slept with someone who put up Erdős for a few weeks at her home, does that count?

Only if she slept with Erdos first, in which case you get an automatic Erdos number of 2. Possibly.

I never asked her explicitly, but from her description of the guy I would have to say she didn't. Unless she was bitter about the breakup or something.

[SimonM]

I've slept with someone who put up Erdős for a few weeks at her home, does that count?

Only if she slept with Erdos first, in which case you get an automatic Erdos number of 2. Possibly.

I never asked her explicitly, but from her description of the guy I would have to say she didn't. Unless she was bitter about the breakup or something.

I was under the impression from 'The Man who Loved only Numbers' that he had a physical problem with his penis, which caused him great pain when he had an erection, and he told someone (can't remember the exact person) that he hadn't had sex (and that was when he was 70)

[Korandder]

I have one paper so far in grid computing. Abstract I am pretty sure I have a finite Erdős number through that paper.

I am currently doing research on shell and emission features of A type stars which will lead to another paper.

[monkeykoder]

I've slept with someone who put up Erdős for a few weeks at her home, does that count?

Only if she slept with Erdos first, in which case you get an automatic Erdos number of 2. Possibly.

Interestingly, by defining Erdos numbers in this way (and ignoring homosexual relationships, I guess) you would ensure that anyone with an odd Erdos number was female and anyone with an even Erdos number was male. Hmm.

Is it bad that I thought of the exact same thing when reading that post? Too bad I'm an undergrad one of my profs I'm pretty sure has an erdos number of 2.

[hthall]

Erdős number 3 in three ways; Erdős number 2 pending. (Technically--but it's really more of a fourth route to 3, since we collaborated only by way of a third coauthor, and have never actually met.) In the stricter sense, where only two-author papers count, it's still infinite.

[ptveite]

I have a paper that is being published in an Italian Math Journal. Erdos number: 3. Wladyslaw Wilczynski - Tibor Salat - Paul Erdos. Where can I upload a PDF?

[Tossrock]

I go to UCSD, and my discrete math (CSE21) professor is this guy

I should ask him to write a paper with me!

[jestingrabbit]

I have a paper that is being published in an Italian Math Journal. Erdos number: 3. Wladyslaw Wilczynski - Tibor Salat - Paul Erdos. Where can I upload a PDF?

You could just attach it and see what happens. Its probably way too big though.

[rflrob]

I've slept with someone who put up Erdős for a few weeks at her home, does that count?

Only if she slept with Erdos first, in which case you get an automatic Erdos number of 2. Possibly.

Interestingly, by defining Erdos numbers in this way (and ignoring homosexual relationships, I guess) you would ensure that anyone with an odd Erdos number was female and anyone with an even Erdos number was male. Hmm.

There's a CS professor at my school (I don't remember his name (I'm a physics major and have only heard about him through CS majors), and even if I did, probably wouldn't post it) who apparently has slept with many of his Grad Students. My friends and I decided there should be a (his name) number, except you get it through sleeping with people. We know several people with numbers of 2.

[btilly]

I'm long out of mathematics. (Never quite finished my PhD.) But my official Erdos number is 3. My unofficial one is 2. The difference is because the official count does not include shared math monthly problems. I have 2 math papers and the aforementioned math monthly problem.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1305(199602)50%3A1%3C14%3AOTCOIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L is the paper that got me my official Erdos score. The math monthly problem was the following. Suppose that F is a field and X is an infinite set. The set of functions from X to F is a vector space over F. What is the dimension of that vector space?

[MysticTerminator]

Hmm. Isn't there a basis vector corresponding to each element x \in X, namely the function that is 0 at all points of X other than x and 1 at x?

[Owehn]

If X doesn't have a topology on it, the basis is probably a Hamel basis, meaning you need to be able to form arbitrary elements of the vector space using only finite linear combinations of basis elements. So there's certainly a basis for the vector space containing each of those functions, but if X is infinite they don't span the vector space, because finite linear combinations of them are nonzero at only finitely many points.

[btilly]

If X doesn't have a topology on it, the basis is probably a Hamel basis, meaning you need to be able to form arbitrary elements of the vector space using only finite linear combinations of basis elements. So there's certainly a basis for the vector space containing each of those functions, but if X is infinite they don't span the vector space, because finite linear combinations of them are nonzero at only finitely many points.

Exactly right.

I don't remember the details of the proof, but the answer is that the basis has the same cardinality as the power set of X.

[ptveite]

Hmmm....we'll see if this works....

[adlaiff6]

I have a professor who has a problem he hasn't solved yet, but which he discussed heavily with Erdos at some point. Should he solve it and write it up (hopefully with my co-authorship), I believe he'd include Erdos as well, which would get me a 'posthumous' Erdos number of 1 or 2 (depending whether I co-author the paper). Much speculation though.

[J77]

Erdos?

It's all about your h-index these days

[thedufer]

Having looked up this "Erdos number" and "h-index", I am suddenly intrigued. I'd never heard of ways of ranking scientists. The h-index seems to be more useful than the Erdos number. But having little experience in the world of authorships and co-authorships, I wouldn't really know.

More interestingly, I recently developed something that will probably turn into a math paper in the near future. "The near future" being defined as "when I learn how to do proofs". Speaking of which, if anyone has a goodly amount of experience in this proof business, I may be interested in speaking to you. The math is pretty simple multivariable calculus, but I work math in a very intuitive way and therefore have no idea how to go about proving something that I'm 99% sure is true.

[DeGuerre]

I'm proud to say that my Erdos number is 6. I'm not sure that I really want to reduce it any further.

[paul_erdos]

Zero, my friends. Unfortunately, from Math Heaven, I cannot upload any of my over 1,500 articles, due to the Pearly Firewall.

[3.14159265...]

Best reminder that we are on the Internets.

Great first post.

[Sarcasticus]

http://geocities.com/gregdoyle007/greg5.pdf

Here's my honours thesis. It's about using Eisenstien reciprocity to discover prime, primitive roots.

I remember working for 10 months or so on this. I absolutely loved writing it...

[3.14159265...]

Sweet! I was thinking of learning the proof of Cubic reciprocity and here it is all wrapped up in chocolate for me

Thank you

[adlaiff6]

We submitted this to CRYPTO 2008. Sadly, it's not as pure-math as I'd like it to be, but it wasn't all systems-oriented either, and the project itself was a lot of fun anyway. We've implemented hashing, and we just have to tidy up the program a bit more and make it usable.