Erdős Number

According to wikipedia, "Erdős number describes the 'collaborative distance' between a person and Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers." So, who is this Paul Erdős and why is his number famous?

Paul Erdős was a famous mathematician who had an enormous output of mathematical papers. Because of his enormous output, his friends created a metric as a tribute to him. According to this metric, Paul Erdős gets the Erdős number 0. Anyone who has co-authored a paper with him gets an Erdős Number 1. Anyone who has co-authored a paper with a person having an Erdős Number 1 and not directly with Paul Erdős, gets an Erdős Number 2 and so on.

Why am I telling you all this? Because, I believed that I had an Erdős Number of 4! I recently wrote a paper with my Professor, Dr. Ramakrishna Kakarala, who has an Erdős number of 3. This got me excited! The complete tree being: Vittal -> Kakarala -> Kelttee -> J. H. Straight -> Erdős. Therefore, my Erdős Number should be 4, right?

If you were a keen reader, you would have observed that I mentioned "I believed" and not "I believe". The reason being, I was wrong! I do not have an Erdős Number of 4 though I have collaborated with my professor who has an Erdős Number of 3. I missed a crucial part of the definition of the Erdős Number. "Erdős number describes the 'collaborative distance' between a person and Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers." There you have it. Sadly, the paper that I wrote was not a mathematical paper. For a paper to be a mathematical paper, it has to be published in journals or conferences dedicated to mathematics.

Its funny how people can go from a state of euphoria to a state of despondency within a matter of seconds! Ah, but this is life...

Nature's Unchangeable Path

Today morning I got up to the usual sound of the alarm from my mobile phone. Sleepily, I walked across my room and opened the window to let in some of the fresh chilly morning air. The air blowing on my face usually wakes my brain up and helps me get my day started. On some days I have to take the help of coffee and on others, nothing helps at all! Today was a different day though. I was wide-awake after opening the window just half way through...

My room's window has a sliding mechanism to open and close the glass pane. Therefore, you just have to push the glass in either direction to get the job done. While this looks to be a straightforward job, little did I realise that pushing it open today, would hurt a living creature.

When I opened the window today morning, I saw a poor butterfly get struck between the window's railings. I had not realised that it had taken shelter on the other side of the window for the night. The butterfly was haplessly fluttering its wings and trying to get away from the "death grip". It was such a saddening sight and I wanted to help the harmless creature. The fact that its wings were struck in the railings meant that I could just not slide the glass pane in the either direction. It would in fact injure the insect even more.

While I was thinking of what to do, the multicoloured insect was fluttering continuously with all its might. The vigorous fluttering had eventually tired the insect, as it was lay silent for the next couple of minutes. I had fears that its wings might be damaged and was wondering if it would ever to fly again. I just did not know what to do. Every solution I thought of would in fact hurt the butterfly further.

After rejecting most of the ideas, I stuck to the least painful method. I decided to lift the glass pane to increase the gap between the glass and railings, enabling the butterfly to fly to freedom. I slowly lifted the glass pane and the butterfly started fluttering again. I had to blow at it to help it get away from this claustrophobic space. Once it reached the end of the glass pane, it flew into the open air celebrating its freedom. It looked to me that the insect was not completely at ease with itself and was trying to reach a nearby tree to settle down. What a joyous moment it was to see the insect escape from a near death position. However, the joy was short lived...

Just when it seemed that the butterfly would find sanctity in the nearby tree, a mynah came swooping in from nowhere and caught the injured insect in its beaks. It was both a stunning and a sad sight. Stunning because I was amazed at the predatory skills of that bird as it caught a flying insect in mid air and sad because the butterfly had finally met its end.

I had to acknowledge that this was how nature worked and that Nature had already planned the time each creature would meet its end. At the most, it is only possible to delay the inevitable, but not stop it completely.