Since I am technically a co-author of the Nature paper, does any of the named people on the paper, or any of the other players have an Erdos number? I want an Erdos number, and I think that qualifies!
If you are wondering what an Erdos number is, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number
According to http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html , Andrew Leaver-Fay has an Erdos number of at most 3:
Andrew Leaver-Fay coauthored with Jack Scott Snoeyink MR2306650
Jack Scott Snoeyink coauthored with Richard M. Pollack MR1014741 (91a:68265)
Richard M. Pollack coauthored with Paul Erdős1 MR1007715 (90f:05077)
So, it's at most 4 for the rest of us…
4 is a pretty low Erdos number. I'm happy with 4.
Seth, Firas, and the rest of the team who actually deserve it should be proud of that number. Andrew already has a 3, so no benefit for him, but a 3 is darn good.
I'll get to joke, though, that I have a 4.
Let's hope someone with an Erdos number of 1 has played Foldit. Then we'd all have Erdos numbers of 2 – and at this point you can't get a new Erdos number lower than that. ;)
Please don't think of the "Foldit players" entry on the author list as something of a joke, as you're implying with "actually deserve it". Some players' contribution I'd rank as equal or greater than that of several named authors. No disrespect intended to the named authors: I rather think all of us, to some extent, helped contribute to the results published.
Wow that is some serious geek cred we all have now!
I would like to echo admin's thoughts:
without you Foldit players there would have been no Nature paper, it's as simple as that.
I'll add that even if you never cracked the top 100, you were still competing and forcing other players to push a bit harder (as hopefully Figure S14 in the Supplementary Material of the paper showed: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7307/extref/nature09304-s1.pdf)
So you all deserve that geek recognition!
Ah, theres the supplemental. I read the paper today and didn't find it.
yay, erdos numbers via video game!
Anyone here have a Erdos-Bacon number?