Notional Slurry

[juldea]

So first en_ki posted a link to this article on why unorthodox ("crackpot") scientists fail (and it's not because of their crazy ideas). I checked out this notionalslurry guy/thing, and was immediately drawn in the by the title of the (at this time) penultimate article (title slightly altered):

You know that part in Babyon Five when they had [spoiler] the [spoiler] and the [spoiler] and you thought it was all over, but they still had to deal with [spoiler] and all, and so it still took an entire [spoiler]-full of episodes to finish things off? Like [spoiler] and [spoiler]?; or, Erdos Number Auction II

Hey, some people haven't seen it yet. I just got there, in fact..

The better thing is what that article is actually about: an ebay auction selling off an Erdös number of 2. Apparently there was this busy mathematician named Paul Erdös who collaborated with at least 509 other people on papers until his death in 1986, and now he's the Kevin Bacon of the mathematics community. If you co-authored directly with him, you get an Erdös number of 1; if you co-author with one of those, your number is 2, etc. The auction is selling off the opportunity to write a paper with someone who has a 1, so you get a 2. *grin*

I think that's awesome.

Comments

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Neat. I had never heard of it before.

Examples?