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Is your Erdos number greater than 5?
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News
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By chawne
Posted Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 06:03:38 AM PDT
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William Tozier, a consultant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, offered 40 hours of collaboration at auction on ebay. If a paper were to come from these hours, the co-author would inherit an Erdos number of 5; his degrees of separation: Erdos - Kac - Ziff - Newman - Tozier.
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The Chronicle presented the story in an article last week: Thumbing His Nose at Academe, a Scholar Tries to Auction His Services.
From the copy on the auction site, we learn that Tozier is looking to write up a narrative about reactions to the auction. In fact, you can read about it in his blog.
This escapade opens up many questions of the ethical and cultural varieties:
Is an Erdos number of 5 really worth anything?
Is it right to sell "prestige?"
Should anyone bother to try to fight the elitism of academia?
Has anyone ever gotten a quality paper after just forty hours of thinking?
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