For fun, I calculated my Erdős number tonight (using the AMS Collaboration Distance Calculator).  Your Erdős number represents the number of hops between you and the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős (where a link is established between two authors when they have collaborated on an academic paper together).  It was created as a joke to approximate your importance in the mathematical community. Erdős was assigned a number of 0.  Each of Erdős’ collaborators were assigned a number of 1, their collaborators were assigned a number of 2, and so forth.  The shortest path I could find between Erdős and myself was of length 5:

  1. Paul Erdős and Paul C. Kainen
  2. Paul C. Kainen and Vladik Ya. Kreinovich
  3. Vladik Ya. Kreinovich and Hung Trung Nguyen
  4. Hung Trung Nguyen and Leonid K. Reznik
  5. Leonid K. Reznik and Kurt Alfred Kluever (via IEEE Sensors 2007)

I also found a couple of length 6 paths with interesting researchers (bolded below) in them:

  1. Paul Erdős and Dieter Kratsch
  2. Dieter Kratsch and Jitender S. Deogun
  3. Jitender S. Deogun and Shashank K. Mehta
  4. Shashank K. Mehta and George Nagy
  5. George Nagy and Richard Zanibbi
  6. Richard Zanibbi and Kurt Alfred Kluever (via IEEE WNYIP 2008)
  1. Paul Erdős and Andrew M. Odlyzko
  2. Andrew M. Odlyzko and Colin L. Mallows
  3. Colin L. Mallows and Henry S. Baird
  4. Henry S. Baird and Dorothea Blostein
  5. Dorothea Blostein and Richard Zanibbi
  6. Richard Zanibbi and Kurt Alfred Kluever (via IEEE WNYIP 2008)

An interesting article here states that “the median Erdős number is 5; the mean is 4.65, and the standard deviation is 1.21.”

Here are some great links for more reading about this topic: