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Erdős–Bacon numbers got their start when Simon Singh (reference 1 archived) was having lunch with me, and I observed that mine was 4. He writes for a living, so
by Syzygies 7y ago
Erdős–Bacon numbers got their start when Simon Singh (reference 1 archived) was having lunch with me, and I observed that mine was 4. He writes for a living, so he wrote a column.
Oddly, I was long ago written out of this Wikipedia article.
There is a reasonable ambiguity about Erdős numbers, as people do publish posthumously with him, based on collaborations while he was alive.
There is also an ambiguity about Bacon numbers. One can take the spirit of the original dorm room bull sessions that started Bacon numbers, or one can take the idiosyncrasies as gospel of the web site that now reports Bacon numbers. For example, a mathematician can appear as themself in a documentary, and gain a Bacon number according to this web site. They defend this by observing that these mathematicians did experience film sets (so do caterers) but the reality is that it's too hard to clean the data. I've been interviewed multiple times for documentaries, and the experience bears no resemblance whatsoever to that of working on and acting in "A Beautiful Mind". The original intent was to count actors with credited speaking roles.
- cabacon 7y agoYup. I have an Erdős number, but despite being a Bacon, no Bacon number to my great dismay.
- boulos 7y agoThanks for the background! Why did you two choose to make it the sum of the two scores (so L1 distance) rather than L-inf/max? It seems to me that you'd want to have the minimum value be a 1, representing someone who co-authored a paper with Erdos and appeared in a film with Bacon. The sum will always be at least two though (whatever I guess), but that also (2,2) isn't that far away from the "origin" such that it feels wrong to call it 4 (and similarly 2,4 being 6 seems funny).
- notrandom 7y agoI prefer the sum, as it describes the minimum-length path containing all participants. It seems like the intuitive expansion of the concept of the Erdös number.
- freepor 7y agoWhat role did you play in A Beautiful Mind? I.e. who are you?
- ceocoder 7y agoBased on [0] and [1] I'd say Professor Dave Bryer. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20121112081753/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4768389/And-the-winner-tonight-is.html https://web.archive.org/web/20121112081753/http://www.telegr... [1] https://simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/erdos-bacon-numbers/ https://simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/erdo... [2] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101413/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t41 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101413/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t41
- Syzygies 7y agoYes, Dave Bayer. I was the math consultant, but it's like joining the circus, once inside you do what you can. For one example, when I was a kid my Mom left out a Time Life book on drugs, and my brother and I were fascinated by the various photographs of spiderwebs made under the influence of different recreational drugs. That idea helped shape the "mad shack" in the film. I was also Russell Crowe's hand double, and I had a speaking part in the pen ceremony.
- freepor 7y agoRussell Crowe's hand double? Does he have bad hands or something?
- frabert 7y agoNot having seen the movie, I'm guessing there are scenes where Crowe needs to write some math, and it just looked more convicing by letting an actual mathematician do it for him.
- pathsjs 7y agoI personally want to thank you. As a mathematician, I always dislike the way maths is displayed in most movies. It was very refreshing to see students compute De Rham cohomology and discuss Galois theory (if I recall correctly) in a major Hollywood production. Then again, "It's my turn" has a proof of the snake lemma in it! :-) (but the scene is much less realistic)
- istillwritecode 7y agoLen Adleman was listed as an advisor in the credits of the movie "Sneakers". Is that a connection from the math world to the Bacon world?