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A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring mathematical papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon. The lower the number, the closer a person is to Erdős and Bacon, and this reflects a small world phenomenon in academia and entertainment.

The idea of Erdős–Bacon numbers has been written about by Simon Singh in the British media[1][2] and Benjamin Rosenbaum,[3] among others,[4] in the blogosphere. Roles as self, as a cameo appearance, or as an extra are often included for the Bacon component. The Erdős criterion technically refers to collaboration on mathematical papers, but it is often relaxed to include general research articles for the Erdős–Bacon number.[5]

In general, to have a defined Erdős–Bacon number, it is necessary (but not sufficient) for one to have both appeared in a film and co-authored an academic paper.

Notable scientists with defined Erdős–Bacon numbers include popular astronomer Carl Sagan. One of the best-known actors with a number is Natalie Portman, whose authorship of a psychology paper while at Harvard University earned her an Erdős–Bacon number of 6 (see table below).

Contents

Scientists [edit]

It is sometimes reported that Erdős himself has an Erdős–Bacon number of three. His Erdős number is zero by definition. His Bacon number is erroneously thought to be three since he appears in N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős (1993) with a Gene Patterson, and a Gene Patterson was in Box of Moon Light (1996) with Sam Rockwell who was in Frost/Nixon (2008) with Kevin Bacon. However, this is incorrect, as the Gene Patterson in N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős is not the same person as the one in Box of Moon Light (1996).

Astronomer Carl Sagan has an Erdős number of no more than 4[6] via Steven J. Ostro and a Bacon number of 2,[7] for a total of 6. Physicist Richard Feynman has an Erdős number of 3[8] and a Bacon number of 3, having appeared in the film Anti-Clock alongside Tony Tang.[9]

Electrical and computer engineering professor Robert J. Marks II has an Erdős–Bacon number of five.[10][11][12][13] Intelligent design advocate William A. Dembski has an Erdős–Bacon number of six.[14][15]

Actors [edit]

Former NCAA gymnastics champion Kiralee Hayashi[16] may be the professional actress with the lowest Erdős number (3), having co-written a peer-reviewed mathematics paper on Riemannian manifolds with Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau,[17] and having a Bacon number of 2,[18] giving her an Erdős–Bacon number of 5.[19]

Danica McKellar, most famous for her role as Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years, has an Erdős–Bacon number of 6, having coauthored a mathematics paper published while an undergraduate at UCLA. Her paper gives her an Erdős number of 4, and a Bacon number of 2, both of them having worked with Margaret Easley.[20]

US actress Natalie Portman has an Erdős–Bacon number of 6. She collaborated (using her birth name, Natalie Hershlag) with Abigail A. Baird,[21] who has a collaboration path[22][23][24] leading to Joseph Gillis, who has an Erdős number of 1.[25] Bacon and Portman both appear in New York, I Love You,[citation needed] giving Portman a Bacon number of 1 and an Erdős number of 5.

British actor Colin Firth has an Erdős–Bacon number of 7. Firth is formally credited as co-author of a neuroscience paper, "Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults",[26] after he suggested on BBC Radio 4 that such a study could be done.[27] Another author of that paper, Geraint Rees, has an Erdős number of 5,[28][29][30] which gives Firth an Erdős number of 6. Firth appeared with Kevin Bacon in Where the Truth Lies, so his Bacon number is 1.

Others [edit]

Hank Aaron, a baseball player, is sometimes also considered to have an Erdős–Bacon number of 3, as he and Erdős both autographed the same baseball (for which he is jokingly referred to as having Erdős number of 1),[31] and he also appeared in Summer Catch with Susan Gardner, who was in In The Cut with Bacon.

Table [edit]

For people listed in the Internet Movie Database who are connected to Kevin Bacon, the average Bacon number is 2.957.[32] For mathematicians listed in the American Mathematical Society's MR Collaboration Distance search engine[33] who are connected to Erdős, the average Erdős number is 4.65.[34] There currently exists no exhaustive list of people with defined Erdős–Bacon numbers, but a select group is listed below.

Name Erdős number Bacon number Erdős–Bacon number
Albert, DavidDavid Albert 4[35][36][37][38] 3(a)(b) 7(b)
Billingsley, PatrickPatrick Billingsley 4[39][40][41][42] 2[43] 6
Dalrymple, DavidDavid Dalrymple 3[44][45][46] 2(b)(d)[47] 5(b)(d)
Dembski, William A.William A. Dembski 4 [11][12][13][15] 2(a)(b)[14] 6
Houh, HenryHenry Houh 5[48][49][50][51][52] 2[53][54] 7
Knight, RobertRobert Knight 4[55][56][57][58] 2(d)[59][60] 6(d)
Marks II, Robert J.Robert J. Marks II 3[11][12][13] 2(a)(b)[10] 5
McKellar, DanicaDanica McKellar 4[35][61][62][63] 2(a) 6
Portman, NatalieNatalie Portman (Hershlag) 5[21][22][23][24][25] 1(a) 6
Sagan, CarlCarl Sagan 4[8] 2(b)[7] 6
Stern, TomerTomer Stern 4[64][65][66][67] 3[68][69][70] 7
Werner, WendelinWendelin Werner 3[71][72][73] 3[74] 6
Strogatz, StevenSteven Strogatz 3[75][76][77] 1(b)(d)[78] 4(b)(d)

Notes:

(a) See discussion above.
(b) Includes role as self
(c) Includes role as extra
(d) Includes documentary credit

References [edit]

  1. ^ Simon Singh (September 2005). "A Further Five Numbers, Programme 3: 6 degrees of separation". BBC. Also available at [1]. Retrieved 2006-12-01. 
  2. ^ Simon Singh (May 2002). "And the Winner Tonight Is". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2006-12-01. 
  3. ^ Benjamin Rosenbaum (September 2004). "Bacon-Erdős numbers". Retrieved 2006-12-01. 
  4. ^ Cory Doctorow (September 2004). "Erdős-Bacon numbers". Boing Boing. Retrieved 2006-12-01. 
  5. ^ "There's not much separating her from Bacon, Erdos", USA Today, August 14, 2007: "As a UCLA undergraduate, McKellar co-wrote a theorem proving a magnetic field property [...] So McKellar's "Erdos-Bacon" number is 6. Some academics who have had film cameos have lower Erdos-Bacon numbers [...]"
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  7. ^ a b "The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia". Retrieved 2013-01-22. 
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  9. ^ "The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia". Retrieved 2006-12-05. 
  10. ^ a b [2] IMDb listing for Robert J. Marks II.
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  33. ^ MR Collaboration Distance search engine
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  43. ^ Pat Billingsley at the Oracle of Bacon
  44. ^ N Gershenfeld, D Dalrymple, K Chen, A Knaian, F Green, E Demaine, S Greenwald, P Schmidt-Nielsen, "Reconfigurable asynchronous logic automata (RALA)", ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 45(1), January 2010
  45. ^ N Alon, M Bădoiu, E Demaine, M Farach-Colton, M Hajiaghayi, A Sidiropoulos, "Ordinal embeddings of minimum relaxation: general properties, trees, and ultrametrics.", Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 650–659, ACM, New York, 2005.
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  48. ^ H Houh, J Adam, M Ismert, C Lindblad, D Tennenhouse, "The VuNet Desk Area Network: Architecture, Implementation, and Experience", IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 13(4), May 1995
  49. ^ D Tennenhouse, B Lampson, S Gillett, J Klein, "Virtual Infrastructure: Putting Information Infrastructure on the Technology Curve", Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 28(13), October 1996
  50. ^ C Ellison, B Frantz, B Lampson, R Rivest, B Thomas, T Ylonen, "SPKI Certificate Theory", IETF Network Working Group RFC2693, September 1999
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  53. ^ "21 (2008) - IMDB" as "Chinatown Dealer" with line "Winner winner chicken dinner"
  54. ^ "Quicksilver" (1986) - IMDB with Laurence Fishburne from 21 appearing with Kevin Bacon
  55. ^ Edward F. Chang, Erik Edwards, Srikantan S. Nagarajan, Noa Fogelson, Sarang S. Dalal, Ryan T. Canolty, Heidi E. Kirsch, Nicholas M. Barbaro, Robert T. Knight (2011). "Cortical Spatio-temporal Dynamics Underlying Phonological Target Detection in Humans". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23: 1437–1446. 
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  57. ^ Y Raiter, A Farfel, O Lehavi, O B Goren, A Shamiss, Z Priel, I Koren, B Davidson, D Schwartz, A Goldberg, Y Bar-Dayan (2008). "Mass casualty incident management, triage, injury distribution of casualties and rate of arrival of casualties at the hospitals: lessons from a suicide bomber attack in downtown Tel Aviv". Emergency Medicine Journal 25: 225–229. 
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  59. ^ "Number One with a Bullet (2008) - IMDB" as Himself
  60. ^ "The Woodsman (2004) - IMDB" with Mos Def from Number One With A Bullet appearing with Kevin Bacon
  61. ^ L Chayes, D McKellar, B Winn, "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on Z 2," J. Phys. A: Math. Gen, 1998.
  62. ^ JT Chayes, L Chayes, R Kotecký, "The analysis of the Widom-Rowlinson model by stochastic geometric methods," Communications in Mathematical Physics, 1995.
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  64. ^ Estimating cell depth from somatic mutations (2008) - NCBI
  65. ^ Genomic variability within an organism exposes its cell lineage tree (2005) - NCBI
  66. ^ Interactive Proofs and the Hardness of Approximating Cliques (1995) - NCBI
  67. ^ On the graph of large distance (1989)
  68. ^ Etz Hadomim Tafus (1995) - IMDb
  69. ^ Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986) - IMDb
  70. ^ Apollo 13 (1995) - IMDb
  71. ^ Shi, Zhan; Werner, Wendelin. Asymptotics for occupation times of half-lines by stable processes and perturbed reflecting Brownian motion. Stochastics Stochastics Rep. 55 (1995), no. 1-2, 71–85.
  72. ^ Csáki, Endre; Shi, Zhan. Large favourite sites of simple random walk and the Wiener process. Electron. J. Probab. 3 (1998), no. 14, 31.
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  76. ^ Limon, Alfonso; Bertuglia, Silvia; Nadim, Ali; Salamon, Peter Oxygen transport from the outer boundary of a pulsating wall of an arteriole. Math. Comput. Simulation 73 (2006), no. 1-4, 175–182.
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  78. ^ Connected: The Power of Six Degrees
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