Apart from his Other idiosyncratic elements 'died' and 'left' of Erdős vocabulary I found the following particularly amusing:
# children were referred to as "epsilons" (because in mathematics, particularly calculus, an arbitrarily small positive quantity is commonly denoted ε);
# to give a mathematical lecture was "to preach" and
# to give an oral exam to a student was "to torture" him/her.
This was a great book. The story about the taxi cab number 1729 was staggering to me in what it implied about how Ramanujan's mind worked. It was also profoundly sad that because the little formal exposure he had was from a book where there were no proofs he thought that one merely stated results. Many PhDs have since been awarded for proofs of some of these results.
It is jokingly said that Baseball Hall of Famer
Hank Aaron has an Erdős number of 1 because they
both autographed the same baseball when Emory
University awarded them honorary degrees on the
same day. Erdős numbers have also been humorously
assigned to an infant, a horse, and several actors.
The fundamental principle underlying the Erdos number is collaboration. If you didn't work together, you don't get the credit.
Color me humorless if you like, but I would've thought hackers would care about being accurate and precise.
yes it is jokingly said. The book cited above (The man who knew only numbers") is a great read. It has a picture of Erdos with Aaron receiving honorary degrees.
I studied graph theory for a year at MSU with Edgar Palmer in 1981. At the time the proof of the four color conjecture, which was very controversial because it used a computer program (egads!!) was making the rounds. Palmer related many interesting stories about Erdos and also had us work on some of the problems for which Erdos had offered rewards.
