My dad has a 2.

Erdős stayed at my dad's house so that they could work together. The first morning at breakfast, Erdős asked my dad to butter his toast for him. My dad refused.

That's why he doesn't have 1!

Poor choice in hindsight haha!

But do you have an Erdos-Bacon number, the true test of a polymath?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_numbe...

I admit I geeked out and calculated this a couple months ago, after I was credited on my first academic paper (my career is in programming)

If you count video games, I have a Bacon number of 3 because I was credited on Tiger Woods 2003-2005 with an artist named Sylvain Doreau, who is credited on Shrek. John Lithgow was in Shrek and in Footloose with Kevin Bacon.

My former coworker Li Zhang has an Erdos number of 2 and we worked together on this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00133 (with him doing a lot more work than me).

So putting that together is an Erdos-Bacon number of 3 + 3 = 6.

Years ago I was first author on a paper with this chap, who gives his Erdös number as 4, which would presumably make mine 5:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-cortina-borja-2b98ab47

Also, I was in a film with Donald Sutherland (even managing to get on screen at the same time) so I think that's a Bacon number of 2.

I have 2, through Neil Calkin.

I have a 5 - i published in ocean engineering / statistical signal processing.

You can use https://www.csauthors.net/distance/mandar-chitre/paul-erdos to find yours.

I currently have a 5 - I only have 1 conference paper - but once I publish with my advisor, I'll bump that down to a 4. The 2 levels below my advisor are both professors at my institution, so I can do better if I try. I'm in ECE btw, which is probably why it's not that great.

I have a 3, so at least I published with people that have a 2 (e.g., John Tate, Barry Mazur).

I have a 3, through Bruce Berndt. One used to be able to progress to a 2 without doing additional work, but nowadays that has become close to impossible.

I only published one paper (which in undergrad... never got into research after that) but it got me a 5.