On Apr 28, 2005, at 11:07 PM, Bill Holt asked: > Is the "erdos" part of the list address associated with the famous > Hungarian (?) mathematician or some sort of computerish acronym, or > something else?
The "erdos" in the name of the server is indeed in reference to the late Paul Erdos. He visited Louisville quite a few times, and worked with several people on the faculty. A previous posting referred to the Erdos number of mathematicians. This is documented by The Erdos Number Project [1]. People who wrote a research paper with Erdos have an Erdos number of 1. (There are at least two on the present UofL faculty with Erdos number of 1.) Those who have written a paper with someone having Erdos number 1 are two hops away from Erdos, and have an Erdos number of 2, and so forth. Since Erdos was so prolific, a huge number of people are listed at levels 1 and 2. By the time you get to an Erdos number of 3, there are too many people to count. (My Erdos number is 3, for example.) [1] <http://www.oakland.edu/enp/index.html> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 2373 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20050429/63e64eff/attachment.bin
