An Erdős–Bacon Number
I will likely never have a finite Erdős–Bacon number which is found by adding one’s Bacon number, with one’s Erdős number. The Bacon number is based on the number of degrees one is separated from Kevin Bacon in terms of film appearances, while the Erdős number is based on the number of degrees one is separated from mathematician Paul Erdős based on mathematical scholarly article authorship.
While my Bacon number is 3 (I appeared in Snakes on a Blog with Kenan Thompson who appeared in Snakes on a Plane with Rachel Blanchard who appeared in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon), it seems unlikely that I will ever achieve an Erdős number. This will leave my combined Erdős–Bacon number somewhere in the infinity-plus-three range.
For comparison, Danica McKellar (Winny Cooper) has an Erdős-Bacon number of 6, which I find very impressive.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:12 am
I have an Erdos number of 4 (although it’s arguable since the paper wasn’t purely mathematic, although it did involve math).
Alas, my Bacon number is currently infinity. If the marijuana documentary ever comes out, it will still probably be infinity.
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September 28th, 2007 at 10:48 am
If we combined our powers, we’d be at 7.
I’m not sure mine technically counts either, actually. The Oracle of Bacon only includes feature films. “Straight-to-video films don’t make it into the Oracle. If your only credit is straight-to-video, it will claim it’s never heard of you.”
I guess the question is, does the Oracle of Bacon determine the Bacon number universe, or is it just interpreting the universe like the rest of us?
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September 28th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Are you sure it has to be a math paper? Doesn’t CS count? I’m trying to figure mine out; it’s at most 7 but I think I can do better.
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September 28th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I have a bacon number of 2! I appeared in “The Joy of Passover: How to create one passover seder you’ll never forget” (direct to video counts, right?) with John Rothman, who appeared in Picture Perfect with Bacon. So my Erdos-Bacon is at most 9. I rock!
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September 28th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Sadly I doubt that your Erdos number would count.
They seem pretty set on the whole “math” thing. You’ll notice in the Erdos Wikipedia page that there’s also a Pauli number for people involved in physics. If physics doesn’t fall within the penumbra of math, I doubt that computer science would.
You could probably make a decent argument depending upon the topic of the compsci paper you’re using as your starting point.
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September 28th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Even better: I have a Erdos of 5 when connected via a tree automata paper, which is certainly mathematics. So my Erdos-Bacon is 7. That’s better than Carl Sagan and tied with Stephen Hawking!
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September 29th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
The Joy of Passover was released in theaters?
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September 29th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
sadly i have neither finite numbers. and if you count papers that are not necessarily mathematical in nature… i still have neither finite numbers.
crazymonk’s original comment was fantastic. i had to steal it.
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September 29th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
… also interesting that the erdos number is what spawned the bacon number yet i had never heard of the former before doorframe’s post.
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October 1st, 2007 at 2:15 am
Snakes on a blog was released in theaters?
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October 1st, 2007 at 8:44 am
No. I’m not sure that’s a real rule.
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October 1st, 2007 at 2:50 pm
My point exactly.
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