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...
