Not so. It's a lot like actor's Bacon numbers: Meeting someone is one thing, but co-author a mathematical paper or acting alongside them is slightly less trivial than that.

charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com wrote: Not so. It's a lot like actor's Bacon numbers: Meeting someone is one thing, but co-author a mathematical paper or acting alongside them is slightly less trivial than that.

Does everyone in your profession have a "Papal Number", talk about it sometimes over beer, and sometimes put it in resumes?

Monday, October 16, 2006, 12:40:59 AM, Phil wrote: If you know someone's Erdos number, you know exactly his Erdos number. Nothing more. Nobody goes looking in categories after people with "Erdos number 3", so there's no point in having a category. There's no real corelation between the Erdos number and the notability or influence of a person. People who have published papers with many collaborators and people who work in the same fields as Erdos have more chances of having a lower number, but that's all. There are thousands of non-notable mathematicians having numbers 1 and 2, while Alan Turing (one of the greatest mathematicians of the century) has Erdos number 5 and Paul Dirac has number 4. Mathematicians seem to like this piece of trivia because it makes them feel like they belong in a community. And since the CfD is a "popularity contest", not a debate, the categories were kept, despite all the arguments brought. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l