The famous number
 

Finally there's an [URL="http://xkcd.com/599/"]xkcd comic about Paul[/URL] [spoiler]Erdős[/spoiler]!

[spoiler] My Erdős number is 3 [/spoiler]

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itinerant"]He[/URL] is in an great company:
[ATTACH]3800[/ATTACH]

[spoiler]Mine is 2, which proves that the Erdös number says not a goddamn thing about mathematical proficiency.[/spoiler]

Alex

[QUOTE=akruppa;178188]Alex[/QUOTE]
Or personal worth.

If you want to play games like that or Bacon numbers:
My personal QE2 number (touching people that have touched people ..... that have touched QE2, although gloved hands)
2 (and I have pictures to prove it).

How about the Blarney number? Kissing people who have kissed people... who have kissed the Blarney Stone. :devil:

...I am not going to continue in the direction of a [SPOILER]Jesus[/SPOILER] number, but through Paul Erdos... ... ... ...

[QUOTE=akruppa;178188][spoiler]Mine is 2, which proves that the Erdös number says not a goddamn thing about mathematical proficiency.[/spoiler]

Alex[/QUOTE][aol]Me too!!!??!!![/aol]

Those tags mark me out as an old-timer...


Paul

[quote=xilman;178326][aol]Me too!!!??!!![/aol]

Those tags mark me out as an old-timer...[/quote]... and did you point that out just because you felt self-conscious about it, or in order to educate the youth? :smile:

[QUOTE=cheesehead;178369]... and did you point that out just because you felt self-conscious about it, or in order to educate the youth? :smile:[/QUOTE]Primarily the former, with an element of the latter.

All around the world, many of the old beliefs, behaviours, languages and cultural traditions are under threat. I feel that preserving our heritage is an intrinsically valuable enterprise.


Paul

[quote=xilman;178393]All around the world, many of the old beliefs, behaviours, languages and cultural traditions are under threat. I feel that preserving our heritage is an intrinsically valuable enterprise.[/quote]Yes, I too have increasingly felt that way since ... um ... the turn of the century. I'm starting to throw IBM 360/370/1800/704 factoids into discussions recently.

- -

HP Factoid: There is not only "The Museum of HP Calculators" at [URL]http://www.hpmuseum.org/[/URL] on the Web, but also the "HP Computer Museum" at [URL]http://www.hpmuseum.net[/URL]

Note the difference in URLs!

[QUOTE=cheesehead;178440]Yes, I too have increasingly felt that way since ... um ... the turn of the century. I'm starting to throw IBM 360/370/1800/704 factoids into discussions recently.[/QUOTE]Does anyone else here know what is meant by the long September without having to look it up?

I was old-timer when the term (long September, that is) was coined, as can easily be found out from the archives.


Paul

Too bad I didn't stick with number theory, or I would have had a shot at getting 2. I'm at 4, imagine at some point I'll improve to 3, but have very limited options for upgrading to 2.

[QUOTE=xilman;178458]Does anyone else here know what is meant by the long September without having to look it up?

I was old-timer when the term (long September, that is) was coined, as can easily be found out from the archives.


Paul[/QUOTE]


I was participating on Internet discussion groups back in '84...
Many of the people who have long contributed to sci.math, sci.crypt
etc. have long ago disappeared. There are just too many flakes,
cranks, loons, cretins, and trolls today.

Does anyone else remember Rich Rosen? A new word was coined
on his behalf: "rosenhole". How about 'Spaf'?

Discussion groups were terrific back then!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a theory that if one could get enough monkeys banging at
random on typewriters, they would eventually produce the works of
Shakespeare. There is another theory which claims that the Internet
disproves the first theory.

[quote=R.D. Silverman;178571]I was participating on Internet discussion groups back in '84...
Many of the people who have long contributed to sci.math, sci.crypt
etc. have long ago disappeared. There are just too many flakes,
cranks, loons, cretins, and trolls today.

Does anyone else remember Rich Rosen? A new word was coined
on his behalf: "rosenhole". How about 'Spaf'?

Discussion groups were terrific back then!

[/quote]

I remember Rosen's fights with the 'Brahms gang". I remember Spaf (& COAST) and alerts. I even remember a certain someone affiliated with Mitre posting semi-frequently to sci.math.(You can lead a horses .... )

Those were some good discussions back then (back then for me are the late 80s to 2000) as a lot of times exchanges were actually fruitful in clarifying my understanding of research papers, pointing out research results that hadn't become widely disseminated/known and of course pointing out mistakes in books or papers.
I recall being indebted to numerous usenetters at times. I also recall being ever so grateful when Donald Coppersmith took the time and effort not only to email me, when I was a grad student at a non-descript uni, but also to snailmail me some hardcopy papers when I was working with large sparse lin systems over gf(2) circa 1991.

It seems like the good forums & blogs to track discussions and cooperate on problem solving are a bit too distributed and piecemeal all over the place.

C++ya,
xkey

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;178571]I was participating on Internet discussion groups back in '84...
Many of the people who have long contributed to sci.math, sci.crypt
etc. have long ago disappeared. There are just too many flakes,
cranks, loons, cretins, and trolls today.

Does anyone else remember Rich Rosen? A new word was coined
on his behalf: "rosenhole". How about 'Spaf'?

Discussion groups were terrific back then!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a theory that if one could get enough monkeys banging at
random on typewriters, they would eventually produce the works of
Shakespeare. There is another theory which claims that the Internet
disproves the first theory.[/QUOTE]I genuinely forget when I first contributed to Usenet and mailing lists. The UK had very limited connectivity to the internet in those days --- we completely escaped the Morris worm, for instance though we certainly heard about it.

I remember SunSpots (must have been around 1987) and I certainly remember spaf (always lower-case as I recall). I've met him several times, once in Boston, communicated with him quite frequently when we were both in the same line of business. AFAIR, we signed each other's PGP keys.

Aw --- the thread is getting quite soggy with nostalgia.

Paul

[QUOTE=Batalov;178187][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itinerant"]He[/URL] is in an great company:
[ATTACH]3800[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]
A few years later, someone decided to rewrite (or eliminate entirely) the "Itinerant" wiki entry (as found out today). The beautiful Erdos-Christ connection has been severed, and now Paul is linked to [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Personality"]vagabond[/URL] (cross-linked to "vagrant"). It's a good thing that this forum kept a snapshot...