Item:
Finding your Erdos Number.
General Information about Item:
- Customary Folklore: game
- English
Informant Data:
Wes Kendrick ‘19 ; CS Major, Caucasian, 20 years old from Bethesda, Maryland
Contextual Data:
Paul Erdos was a Hungarian mathematician and was one of the most prolific and famous mathematicians of the 20th century. He published around 1500 papers in his lifetime. It is said that his number of publication is 0, and someone who collaborated directly with him is number 1. Someone who collaborated with a person who is a 1 is automatically 2. This way, through collaborations it shows you how close you are to Paul Erdos. A game that is often time played is when a computer science student gets published or is added as a collaborator on a paper, they try to find the shortest amount of connections it takes to get to Paul Erdos and from however many people or connections they have to do to, they get their Erdos Number.
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Informant’s Comments:
The interviewee first heard this game here while taking Computer Science 010 at Dartmouth College. His professor first mentioned the Bacon number based on the actor Kevin Bacon. The professor explained how actors who played a part with Kevin Bacon were given the number 1 while Kevin Bacon himself was number 0. Each interaction/connection added a number similar to how it is with Paul Erdos. The Professor then explained how the Erdos number can be found by looking at connections amongst publications.
Collector’s Comments:
This could be classified as a game because computer science students often times after getting published compete with their friends and peers to see who has the lower Erdos number. The student with the lowest number of connections and thus lower Erdos number ends up winning the game and is considered smarter because he or she is closer to Paul Erdos.
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