Oakland University
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Newsletter Winter 2008
Erdös Numbers
Six Degrees of Separation, Mathematicians’ Style
Oakland University is home to the Erdös Number Project website http://www.oakland.edu/enp/ which provides information on the connectivity of the mathematical research community.
Started by Professor Jerrold Grossman as something of a lark during his sabbatical leave in 1994-95, the project has grown over the past decade and generated considerable interest throughout the mathematical community. Articles have appeared in SIAM News (the newsletter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics), The Mathematical Intelligencer, and elsewhere, and the website records about 200 visits per day. 
Paul Erdös (1913-1996) wrote more mathematical papers (over 1500) and had more research collaborators (over 500) than any other mathematician in history. Since the 1950s, researchers have been computing their “Erdös number” to measure how close they are to the center of the community. Erdös has Erdös number 0, people who have published a jointly-authored paper with Erdös have Erdös number 1, these folks’ other coauthors have Erdös number 2, and so on. (The most well-known take-off on this is the Kevin Bacon Game, which finds analogous connections among movie actors.) About 84% of the 300,000 mathematicians who have published co-authored papers have finite Erdös numbers, which range as high as 13. Using data from the American Mathematical Society, Grossman has amassed an amazing amount of information about this network of interconnections. If you have published a paper with someone else, even if it is in another area like computer science or biology, chances are that you, too, have a finite Erdös number. Check out the website for more information.
Contributed by
Jerry Grossman
NATO Advanced Study Institute
Vlora, Albania, April 27-May 9, 2008
Our faculty member Tony Shaska has received a NATO grant to organize an Advanced Study Institute with theme “New Challenges in Digital Communications” which will take place in Vlora, Albania from April 27 to May 9, 2008. The following well known mathematicians will be lecturers at the Institute: D.J. Bernstein, A. Elezi, J. Gutierrez, W.C. Huffman, K. Magaard, G. Nebe, D. Joyner, V. Pless, T. Shaska, S. Shpectorov, I. Shparlinski, V. Tonchev, and V. Usimenko. Invited speakers include Mirela Ciperiani of Princeton University. There will be approximately 80 participants in the conference. NSF has also provided funds for US based young mathematicians to attend the conference.
The goal of the Advanced Study Institute is to establish a research network in Eastern Europe in areas of cryptography and coding theory. Several of our graduate students will attend the conference.
More information about this activity can be found at http://www.albmath.org/nato.
Figure 2: Poster of the NATO Advanced Study Institute
Other Conferences
