Erdős?

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It's been a couple of years since we looked at Erdős numbers here on Language Log; see the posting by Sally Thomason here and the ones by by Geoff Pullum here and here. A fuller explanation of Erdős numbers can be found in those postings, but here it's enough to say that your Erdős number is is your minimal distance from the incredibly productive and collaborative mathematician Paul Erdős via a chain of joint publications. There are linguists with Erdős numbers of 2 (András Kornai), 3 (Geoff Pullum, via András), and 4 (me, via Geoff).

Now cartoon xkcd gives us (on 19 June) a view of what happens when the Apocalypse is on its way and the news gets to mathematicians:

(Hat tip to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky.)



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