04 February 2008

Google and the Erdos Number

What is Erdős Number?

The Erdős number (IPA: [ɛrdøːʃ]), honouring the late Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific writers of mathematical papers, is a way of describing the "collaborative distance", in regard to mathematical papers, between an author and Erdős.


The google connection

The actual Page Rank is adjusted for some minor factors but the basic idea is still the Erdos Number, even though it is not explicitly stated in the Stanford paper that Sergey and Larry wrote initially about the Google algorithm.


While I'm at it, here is the original Google paper