Links posted on September 12, 2009
The Erdős-Bacon number quantifies how close a person is professionally to both Kevin Bacon AND Paul Erdős. If you're like me you might be thinking "Who even has a defined number?" and if so you're not appreciating the size of the network effect. It's not just professional nerds like Brian Greene or Carl Sagan but also professional actors-who-are-also-nerds like Danica McKellar and Natalie Portman.
I post this because it's interesting but also I know a lot of you nerds out there and I bet none of you have looked up whether you have a defined Erdős number. Surely someone in this group was an author with an author with an author.....