The scientific version of the Bacon number is the Erdös number. Via a post on Finn Nielsen’s blog, I learned that i have a reasonably low Erdös number – three. (I also learned that Finn is one of the few people with a finite Erdös-Bacon number). The reason for both Finn’s and my own low Erdös number, is that my PhD advisor Lars Kai Hansen has co-authored a (highly cited) paper with Peter Salamon who has a bacon number of one. The links are:
- P. Salamon and P. Erdös. The Solution to a Problem of Grünbaum, Canadian Mathematical Bulletin, 31: 129-138 (1988).
- L.K. Hansen and P. Salamon. Neural Network Ensembles, I.E.E.E. Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 12: 993-1001 (1990).
- S. Lehmann, M. Schwartz, L.K.Hansen. Biclique communities. Physical Review E 78:016108 (2008).
With respect to the Erdös-Bacon number, I could make the case that I should have a number of four. The reason is that I actually appear in the documentary (it’s just an uncredited half-second shot of me sitting at my computer) Connected – The power of six degrees, which features my ex-boss and renowned scientist Albert-Laszlo Barabási. Here’s the trailer:
But since I don’t appear on IMDb, I guess it doesn’t really count…
sune lehmann 