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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

I'm disappointed it doesn't work with Erdös numbers.

I thought Google was supposed to be a geeky company.

I was at a dinner event in New Zealand, started talking to this old guy about random topics, and as it turns out... he has an Erdös number of 1. I was definitely a bit floored as he started to describe what they worked on (in person at one point), especially as most of what he spoke of went right over my head. It was a pretty neat and random thing to experience.

As for a "Bacon Number"... I'm giving myself a 1. I actually have a plate of bacon sitting right next to me, and that's the bacon that matters the most.

EDIT: As per jerf (good catch!), I can confirm that I am not actually bacon. I changed my "bacon number" above from 0 to 1.

That would still be 1. To have a bacon (non-capital) number of 0, you would have to be the bacon.

I'm pretty sure there's plenty of a well-marbled tissue where my abs used to be :)

"Be the bacon" I hope someone takes this ad campaign idea and runs with it.

Human meat is often referred to as 'long pig'. That'd be a gutsy campaign.

If you have eaten enough bacon; you are in large quantities, derived from bacon. I think a bacon number of ~0.25 is entirely possible.

Strange times we live in, when making an algorithm to calculate a random piece of trivia is no longer considered 'geeky' =)

Well, yes, but it's not an interesting piece of trivia. Like the Erdös numbers.

> Well, yes, but it's not an interesting piece of trivia. Like the Erdös numbers.

Yes, true, but by not being actually interesting as the Erdös numbers are, this makes it ... interesting. Sort of like the least interesting number, which ... oh, I'm sure you follow. :)

Probably because there's no easily accessible data store like IMDB for famous mathematicians or computer scientists.

Actually there is an automated Erdos number search here:

http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html

using the MathSciNet reference database. Unfortuately, it is only accessible to MathSciNet subscribers, so basically on all university campuses or libraries.

My Erdos number is no higher than 5 :-).

Hm. My old professor has an Erdős number of 3. I should see about authoring a paper with him…

Microsoft's Academic search uses Erdos as a gimmick:

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/VisualExplorer

(The gimmick is that Erdos is the default for the co-author path visualization)

http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/mathematician/-/people/profe...

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/computer_scientist/-/people/...

The more important piece thats missing is the one that Journals need to contribute - papers and author lists. ;)

IMDB data has serious licensing restrictions. I would be extremely surprised if it were used as a source for this.

IMDB, which started in the days of Usenet, was founded on user contributions. In today's parlance, it's built from user generated content (UGC).

It would be surprising to see any suit to enforce the licensing restrictions on a database built from user contributions like IMDB actually go to trial.

We might come away with some interesting answers to the questions of what licensing terms on such databases are truly enforceable (as opposed to mere intimidation).

What happened to that Craigslist lawsuit? How is that progressing?

I would also like to see it work with Erdös -Bacon numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number

erdos-bacon-sabbath http://ebs.rosschurchley.com/

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