Ben Rosenbaum is one of the best new sf writers in the field. Last weekend at the WorldCon, he came up with the idea of finding a conversion function for Erdos numbers (the numeral scietists use to count the number of peer-review paper co-authors between them and Paul Erdos) and Bacon numbers (the number of movies between any actor’s co-stars and an actor who co-starred with Kevin Bacon). Here’s the answer:
As it turns out, the preliminary work has already been done. Brian Greene, for instance, has an Erdös number of 3, and a Bacon number of 2. Thus, my proposed conversion function (allowing edges in the unified Bacon-Erdös graph to represent two people either appearing together in a movie or coauthoring a paper) is as follows:
Finding: an actor with a Bacon number of N has, at most, a Baconized Erdös number of N+5. Similarly, an academic with an Erdös number of M has, at most, an Erdösinated Bacon number of M + 5.
(My initial lines of research, proposing to go through Dolph Lundgren or Natalie Portman, would surely have yielded much less powerful results.)
The emphasis of previous Bacon-Erdös research, however, has not been on unification, but rather on those individuals with authentic claims to both direct Erdös numbers, through actual academic coauthorship and to direct Bacon numbers through actual screen acting. Thus the canonical Bacon-Erdös number is the sum of an individual’s separately earned Erdös number and Bacon number, and this –we learn — is what is devoutly to be sought. The aforementioned Brian Greene and Dave Bayer are tied for the world-record lowest Bacon-Erdös sum of 5.