> To have a defined Erdős–Bacon number, it is necessary to have both appeared in a film and co-authored an academic paper, although this in and of itself is not sufficient.

This surprised me. I guess you could star in a tiny indie film completely closed off from the Bacon graph...

I imagine there would be one massive connected component and a large number of really tiny ones.

Probably easier to co-author a paper with another novice author.

Apparently there are sufficient (even I have one - 7 IIRC) that an even more exclusive club as been formed: https://rosschurchley.com/blog/who-else-has-an-erdos-bacon-s...