April 20, 2004

Numbers for Sale

Bill Tozier is selling the number 5--Erdos number that is. If you win his eBay auction he will attempt to coauthor a paper with you--his number is 4, so yours will be 5.

I had the same reaction that Eszter Hargittai did, in Henry Farrell's comments (which via): Ha ha, mine is lower than his, but

The bummer part is that his number is low enough that I can’t try to sell him my co-authorship for an improved number, because by co-authoring with me, he’d be where he is already.

(I'm not sure if forthcoming papers count, but when my paper with Nuel Belnap on probability in branching space-time comes out, my number will be 3. I think I have a finite but high number without that paper, but I'm not sure how to check.)

Posted by Matt Weiner at April 20, 2004 04:56 PM
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