Paul Erdös was on of the most influential and greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Erdös Number describes the collaborative distance from the great mathematician.

I have co-authored two papers while at Stanford: Efficient Web Form Entry on PDAs and Efficient Web Browsing on Handheld Devices Using Page and Form Summarization, so I was wondering if I too had an Erdös Number. If you have ever published a paper in a journal, you can try to find out your Erdös Number by first visiting the Erdös Number Project website.

After little research, I found out that Paul Erdös co-authored a paper with Ronald Graham, who co-authored a paper with Jeffrey Ullman, who, in turn, has co-authored a book and several papers with Hector Garcia-Molina, who co-authored the two papers with me. Thus, the “collaborative distance” from Erdös is 4.

I then looked at some of the other individuals that have Erdös Number 4 and I found names like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Linus Pauling, and Karl Popper. Not a bad company.

I have to give most of the credit for being able to do the research to Orkut Büyükkökten whose research the papers were based on. Orkut was a great mentor and during the years that we worked together, I got introduced to a lot of interesting and great minds.