[WikiEN-l] Trivial categories

Thu Nov 30 07:59:00 UTC 2006

"Steve Bennett" wrote

> On 11/30/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> > Trouble is: I have checked that my own Erdos number is at most 4. Knowing that it is exactly 4, rather than 3, is equivalent to knowing a huge amount about collaborative papers ... which is a needle-in-haystack search.
> 
> No, it's really easy actually. Go to Wikipedia and check out
> [[Category:Erdos number 2]]. If you've worked on a paper with any of
> the people in it, you're 3. Otherwise, you're 4.

You're putting an awful lot of faith in the completeness and accuracy of our own information ... which in this case changes or should change every time one of a whole bunch of people publishes a preprint with a new collaborator. (By the way, do you update ENs at the preprint or journal publication stage, which might be years on?) It's a fun trivia game, but nightmarish, and EN2 is really the maximum we should allow on the site.

Charles

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