I looked this up in a database after being credited on a paper: a co-author Li Zhang has an Erdos number of 2, which puts me at 3.

If you count video games, I have a Bacon number of 3 because I was credited on Tiger Woods 2003-2005 with an artist named Sylvain Doreau, who is credited on Shrek. John Lithgow was in Shrek and in Footloose with Kevin Bacon.

So that gives 3+3 = 6. If only it were worth anything in real life :)

An Erdős-Bacon number is where the cool cats are at.

eg: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.gauntlett

Erdős numbers are kind of meaningless these days, as the internet has made widespread collaborations easy. For example, if you are an established person in algorithms or bioinformatics, your Erdős number is probably 3. There are a still some 2s around, and keeping your number at 4 or higher takes deliberate effort.

I have an Erdos number of 3, since I published with Barry Mazur who has a 2.

Huh, the search tools have improved since I last looked, it found a 5-path for me (and from the notes, that route has existed since the early 1990s, but last time I looked it didn't turn up. I remember assuming a good path would probably be through a particular coauthor who, according to csauthors.net, turns out to be a 6 via me instead :-)

I will have one, assuming the paper I just submitted gets accepted and published! (And I guess I already have one—JuliaCon journal is just dragging their feet with reviewing.)

Neat tool to look up folks in CS to see their Erdős number: https://www.csauthors.net/

Mine is 3, I published with Steven Gribble who is a 2, because he published with Marie Klawe, who is a 1.

Huh I figured I didn't have an Erdos number because I only incidentally became a second author on like one or two papers during my time in an Uni lab.

I do remember a conversation with one of the professors in my lab who wanted me to talk to one of my other professors (Odlyzko) about finding a paper topic. Which I thought was weird because it's a totally different field, but turns out Odlyzko has an Erdos number of 1, and that was the whole motivation, lol. Nothing came of it. But for some reason that interaction had me mis-remember that I didn't have an Erdos number at all.

But apparently anyone who's ever published an article anywhere has an Erdos number, so mine is 6.

I could have Erdős number 3. I have only written one peer reviewed mathematical paper, which I had reviewed by one of my teachers, Frits Göbel, who has Erdős number 2, if I am not mistaken. At that time, I was not aware of this. If I had asked him as co-author of the paper, which would have made sense, because the paper was a generalisation of some of his research, I would have gotten Erdős number 3.

I have an Erdos number of the first type[0] of 2, and of the second type[1] of 3.

Depending on how you measure things I may have a Bacon number, but it needs to go via TV episodes, and it's quite large. I'm idly considering trying to get a "proper" Bacon number.

[0] The usual one

[1] Where you only count papers that have exactly two authors

I suspect nearly everyone who has published academic research has an Erdos number.

My only paper (in aerospace) gave me an Erdos number of 6.

Many people - a good chunk of chemists are connected through Roald Hoffmann, whose Erdos number is 6.

The world is small. Fun fact - my Stalin number is 4.

Is infinity a number? ;-)

3, via Hans Bodlaender

Most of us, I guess.