Recommended subject: “Small world experiment”
The small word experiment (Milgram, 1967) is a fascinating topic. Did you know that you are probably not so far away from knowing Bin Laden? The guy probably knows a lot of people which, in turn, know another bunch of people, and so on, on to you. There’s the concept of “six degrees of separation”, which states that you’re usually less than 6 connection away from anyone else in your society. The Erdös number (in honour to Paul Erdös) is a measure of distance to the hungarian mathematician, in which a link consists in co-writing a scientific paper with someone. Erdös has E(0), and anyone who has written a paper with him has E(1). Since the death of Erdös in 1996, no more E(1)’s are created, and the average E number will most likely increase substantially.
What is you P number? Mine is P(0), and that of anyone who has posted a comment in my blog is P(1). Do the math (or just comment, and get a free P(1))…