Saturday, July 28, 2007

Erdős–Bacon number the stupidest metric ever.

Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician, who coauthored a lot of papers. A person's Erdős number is the collaborative distance between Erdős and the person in question. A person's Bacon number is the collaborative distance in film, which a person has between themselves and Keven Bacon. An Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of the two. However, since almost nobody has collaborated on a peer reviewed paper and worked as an actor, almost everybody has in infinite Erdős–Bacon number. Though, Danica McKellar and Natalie Portman are notable exceptions (each having collaborated on papers as undergrads at UCLA and Harvard respectively).

Still, dumbest metric ever. I suggest you run away from these kind of nonsensical things at several furlongs per fortnight.

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