I came up with this game after realizing I had an Erdős–Bacon number. He credits me, but spun the article to make this sound like a "thing" other people cared about.
I was written out of that Wikipedia page long ago. Very little of what survives on that page stands up to close scrutiny.
Combining these numbers is an obscure amusement, but people take the separate numbers seriously. For Erdős numbers, should one count posthumous papers? My "2" via Persi Diaconis goes to "3" if one doesn't.
The original intent of the Bacon number game was to count actors in fictional speaking roles. My "2" here is from a speaking role in "A Beautiful Mind". The "Oracle of Bacon" replaced this intent with whatever their database could easily report. Appearing as oneself in a documentary on Erdős had the obvious hilarious effect.
One understand these links better by studying IMBD credits. Daniel Kleitman's "2" depends on a "Thanks" credit from "Good Will Hunting", and few of the other low Bacon numbers on the Erdős–Bacon Wikipedia page can be confirmed at all.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121112081753/http://www.telegr...
I came up with this game after realizing I had an Erdős–Bacon number. He credits me, but spun the article to make this sound like a "thing" other people cared about.
I was written out of that Wikipedia page long ago. Very little of what survives on that page stands up to close scrutiny.
Combining these numbers is an obscure amusement, but people take the separate numbers seriously. For Erdős numbers, should one count posthumous papers? My "2" via Persi Diaconis goes to "3" if one doesn't.
The original intent of the Bacon number game was to count actors in fictional speaking roles. My "2" here is from a speaking role in "A Beautiful Mind". The "Oracle of Bacon" replaced this intent with whatever their database could easily report. Appearing as oneself in a documentary on Erdős had the obvious hilarious effect.
One understand these links better by studying IMBD credits. Daniel Kleitman's "2" depends on a "Thanks" credit from "Good Will Hunting", and few of the other low Bacon numbers on the Erdős–Bacon Wikipedia page can be confirmed at all.