Erdős–Bacon number
Closeness of someone's association with mathematician Paul Erdős and actor Kevin Bacon / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring academic papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in films, by which the person is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon.[1][2] The lower the number, the closer a person is to Erdős and Bacon, which reflects a small world phenomenon in academia and entertainment.[3]
To have a defined Erdős–Bacon number, it is necessary to have both appeared in a film and co-authored an academic paper, although this in and of itself is not sufficient as one's co-authors must have a known chain leading to Paul Erdős, and one's film must have actors eventually leading to Kevin Bacon.