Difference between pages "My Erdös Number" and "Gödel's naturalization interview"

From Simia
(Difference between pages)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
 
(Created page with "{{pubdate|11|August|2020}} When Gödel went to his naturalization interview, his good friend Einstein accompanied him as a witness. On the way, Gödel told Einstein about a g...")
 
Line 1: Line 1:
{{pubdate|26|February|2006}}
+
{{pubdate|11|August|2020}}
After reading a post by [http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2005/10/erdoes_numbers.html Ora] and one by [http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/?p=361 Tim Finin], I tried to figure my own Erdös Number out. First, taking Ora's path, I came up with an Erdös of 7:
 
  
''Paul Erdös - Stephan Hedeniemi - Robert Tarjan - David Karger - Lynn Stein - Jim Hendler - Steffen Staab - Denny Vrandečić''
+
When Gödel went to his naturalization interview, his good friend Einstein accompanied him as a witness. On the way, Gödel told Einstein about a gap in the US constitution that would allow the country to be turned into a dictatorship. Einstein told him to not mention it during the interview.
  
But then I looked more, and with Tim's path I could cut it down to 6:
+
The judge they came to was the same judge who already naturalized Einstein. The interview went well until the judge asked whether Gödel thinks that the US could face the same fate and slip into a dictatorship, as Germany and Austria did. Einstein became alarmed, but Gödel started discussing the issue. The judge noticed, changed the topic quickly, and the process came to the desired outcome.
  
''Paul Erdös - Aviczir Fraenkl - Yaacov Yesha - Yelena Yesha - Tim Finin - Steffen Staab - Denny Vrandečić''
+
I wonder what that was, that Gödel found, but that's lost to history.
  
The point that unnerved me most was that the data was actually there. Not only a subscription-only database for mathematical papers (why the heck is the metadata subscription only?), but there's [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/ DBLP], there's the [http://www.oakland.edu/enp/thedata.html list of Erdös 1 and 2 people] on the [http://www.oakland.edu/enp/ Erdös Number project], there's [http://flink.semanticweb.org/ Flink], and still, I couldn't mash up the data. This syntactic web sucks.
+
{{tag|Simia}}
 
+
<noinclude>{{simiapost|english}}</noinclude>
The only idea that brought me further - without spending even more time with that - was a Google search for ''"my erdös number" "semantic web"'', in the hope to find some collegues in my field that already have found and published their own Erdös number. And yep, this worked quite fine, and showed me two further, totally disjunctive paths to the one above:
 
 
 
''Paul Erdös - Charles J. Coulborn - A. E. Brouwer - Peter van Emde Boas - Zhsisheng Huang - Peter Haase - Denny Vrandečić''
 
 
 
and
 
 
 
''Paul Erdös - Menachem Magidor - Karl Schlechta - Franz Baader - Ian Horrocks - Sean Bechhofer - Denny Vrandečić''
 
 
 
So that's and Erdös of 6 on at least 3 totally different paths. Nice.
 
 
 
What surprises me - isn't this scenario obviously a great training project for the Semantic Web? Far easier than Flink, I suppose, and still interesting for a wider audience as well, like Mathematicians and Noble Laureates? (Oh, OK, not them, they get covered manually [http://www.oakland.edu/enp/erdpaths.html here]).
 
 
 
'''Update'''
 
 
 
I wrote the post quite a time ago. A colleague of mine notified me in the meantime that I have a Erdös of only 4 by the following path:
 
 
 
''Paul Erdös - E. Rodney Canfield - Guo-Quiang Zhang - Markus Krötzsch - Denny Vrandečić''
 
 
 
Wow. It's the social web that gave the best answer.
 
 
 
'''2019 Update'''
 
 
 
Another update, after more than a dozen years: I was informed that I have now an Erdös number of 3 by the following path:
 
 
 
''Paul Erdös - Anthony B. Evans - Pascal Hitzler - Denny Vrandečić''
 
 
 
I would be very surprised if this post requires any further updates.
 
 
 
<noinclude>{{Semantic Nodix post}}</noinclude>
 
{{Missing comments}}
 

Latest revision as of 15:04, 15 November 2020

When Gödel went to his naturalization interview, his good friend Einstein accompanied him as a witness. On the way, Gödel told Einstein about a gap in the US constitution that would allow the country to be turned into a dictatorship. Einstein told him to not mention it during the interview.

The judge they came to was the same judge who already naturalized Einstein. The interview went well until the judge asked whether Gödel thinks that the US could face the same fate and slip into a dictatorship, as Germany and Austria did. Einstein became alarmed, but Gödel started discussing the issue. The judge noticed, changed the topic quickly, and the process came to the desired outcome.

I wonder what that was, that Gödel found, but that's lost to history.

Simia

Previous entry:
Gödel and Leibniz
Next entry:
Mulan