Erdös Number

Several years ago, I met an elderly East European gentleman at the house of a CSU Professor in Fort Collins. Later I found out he was a famous coffee drinking mathematician Paul Erdös.

Some of you may have heard about the Erdös number. I don't know if it is of any significance, but it is definitely interesting. I recently discovered that my Erdös numbers is 2.

Israel Koren co-authored with Paul Erdös, thus his  Erdös number is 1.

"Minimum-diameter cyclic arrangements in mapping data-flow graphs onto VLSI arrays" by P. Erdös, I. Koren, S. Moran, G.M. Silberman, and S. Zaks. In Math. Systems Theory, 1988, Volume 21, Number 2, 85-98.

I have published with Israel Koren, thus my  Erdös number is 2.

S.Y.H. Su, I. Koren, Y.K. Malaiya, “A Continuous Parameter Markov Model and Detection Procedures for Intermittent Faults,” IEEE Trans. Computers, Vol. C-27, No. 6, June 1978, pp. 567-570.

I noticed that according to Erdös Number Project's document I am indeed listed has having Erdös Number 2.

My Einstein Number is 4, since both Albert Einstein and Paul Erdös had Ernst G. Straus as a co-author. My other links to Paul Erdös through separate paths are through Jim Bieman  and through Ying Hua Min.

To find your Erdös Number automatically try  http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html. Unfortunately their data-base is apparently not complete.

What does it mean? See Some Famous People with Finite Erdös Numbers for some interesting facts. In 2004, a researcher Bill Tozier, with an Erdös number of 4, offered the chance for collaboration to obtain an Erdös number of 5 in an auction on eBay. The final  bid serious was  $1,031.  Dr. José Burillo (who already had an Erdös Number 3) who was offended by the mockery, and and made a bid had no real intension of paying.

Perhaps it is not too late to get an Erdös number of 1.

Incidentally I had collaborated with Koren when I was a PhD student working on my PhD thesis "Modeling, Testing and Reliability Analysis of Digital Systems with  Intermittent Faults" (1978) with Prof. S.Y.H. Su. Dr. Koren was visiting us.