Erdős Number
The Erdős number is the “collaborative distance” (measured by research paper authorship) between the mathematician Paul Erdős and another person. In other words, it is the diameter or shortest path of a researcher or mathematician to Paul Erdős, via authorship. It is widely considered the “Bacon number” of mathematics and computer science.
What’s interesting is how well the network of researchers related to and adjacent to Erdős fits into a graph. Each researcher and person (including Erdős) fits as a node in the graph, while the relationships between each person – the connections of coauthors – function as edges between each node.
This instance is so captivating for me because I found about Erdős numbers this summer but didn’t realize how it is a tangible example of a true mathematical phenomenon. As we began to learn about graph theory this semester, it was hard for me to conceptualize the ideas of nodes and edges. Therefore, after realizing the applicability of graph theory in a phenomenon like Erdős numbers, I better understood how networks and graphs in real life materialize.