So I was reading Hal’s blog about Erdos Numbers and my friend Whit:

[blogs.sun.com]

The “main tent” of the analyst’s conference ends with the CTO panel, featuring the person changed with setting technical direction and often architecture for each of Sun’s business units. This year’s herd of nerds included Jim Baty, Andy Bechtolsheim, Tim Bray, Whit Diffie, Glenn Edens, Balint Fleischer, James Gosling, Graham Hamilton, Tim Marsland, Mike Splain, Mark Tremblay, and me. Milling about the stage before the panel, we discussed various potential seating algorithms: alphabetical, tenure, inverse of birth year, and employee number (not equivalent to tenure since Andy left and then returned to the same single-digit employee number). Forever the resident crank, I suggested we sort by Erdos number.

If you are laughing because you know what an Erdos number is, scroll ahead to read the punchline, otherwise, here is a short diversion on the mathematical entitlement known as an Erdos number. Paul Erdos was a prolific Hungarian mathematician. Your Erdos number is the degrees of separation, using co-authored papers as the links, between you and Erdos.

Basically the Erdos number is the progenitor of all this six-degrees-of-FOO (where FOO = Separation, Kevin Bacon) stuff that is a popular diversion.

What surprised me was this comment:

Michigan resident William Tozier set up an eBay auction for an Erdos number of 5, where the winning bidder would co-author a paper with Tozier to enter the exclusive circular graph.

…thie which didn’t surprise me in terms of its having happened – because people are like that – but rather I wonder what the price was?

Courtesy of the RSA-155 paper with Peter Montgomery, and Sam Wagstaff et al, I have a higher personal number (2) that could create any number of 3s, presumably at a rather better price.

Muahahahahahhaahahahahahaha!