Easy way to Erdös #
MathSciNet now has a simple tool to compute your Erdös number. You go here, put an author’s name and first initial followed by an asterisk and then click on the “Collaboration Distance” link and click on the “use Erdös” button. In Sociology, one of the few open paths to Erdös is via Stan Wasserman (E=6; you can check for yourself here). Thus, all co-authors of Stan have a finite Erdös number. One of them is Joe Galaskiewicz (E=7). Since Jeff Larson is a co-author of Joe G’s, and I’m a co-author of Jeff’s, then that puts my Erdös number in the finite camp (E=9).
orgtheory.net 
Eszter Hargittai has an Erdõs number of three.
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Kieran
May 13, 2011 at 1:41 pm
I have one of four, via two paths (John Quiggin and Cosma Shalizi). The obvious lesson is that everyone in the social sciences needs to co-author with Crooked Timber contributors ;)
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Henry Farrell
May 13, 2011 at 3:27 pm
I believe Jim Moody has an Erdos number of three as well: Harary-DR White-Moody which may shorten some paths.
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Ryan
May 13, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Correction to above – I only have one path, since the paper with Cosma was accepted by the Journal of Institutional Economics, but then withdrawn by us (hopefully to be published in a different place soon), after a variety of interesting interactions with the editorial process of aforementioned journal.
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Henry Farrell
May 13, 2011 at 3:40 pm
The girl from “The Wonder Years” has a lower number.
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Guillermo
May 13, 2011 at 3:54 pm
When I was 12 I appeared in about ten episodes of The Wonder Years as an extra. Can I count this towards my Erdos number? Or only if it had been a speaking part?
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gabrielrossman
May 13, 2011 at 4:38 pm
“Can I count this towards my Erdos number? ”
If you’re as pretty as the girl from The Wonder Years, yeah, I can consider you.
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Guillermo
May 13, 2011 at 4:40 pm
I think the correct link to this should be http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/freeTools.html.
My advisor Vincent Buskens (also a sociologist) also has an Erdos number of three, which would make me four, but our joint publications are note indexed at MathSciNet. It obviously depends a lot on what you count as a joint “mathematical” publication.
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Rense
May 13, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Gabriel, only you would consider being an extra on The Wonder Years for its use in lowering your Erdos number.
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Noah
May 13, 2011 at 5:50 pm
I’m disappointed by the skepticism about my entirely legitimate path through Winnie Cooper (which would give me an Erdos # of 5), but I already have a path length of 4:
Rossman G — Bonacich P
Bonacich P — Liggett TM
Liggett TM — Darling DA
Darling DA — Erdos P
I’ll be in my trailer if anyone wants to get an Erdos number of 5 by letting me sign on as a co-author to a manuscript just before they submit it.
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gabrielrossman
May 13, 2011 at 6:29 pm
So it seems that there are actually many paths to Erdos in sociology… maybe that says something about the usefulness of this number?
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Rense
May 13, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Do patents count? If so, I apparently have an Erdos number of 5, via G. M. Nepomnyashchiĭ / Nepomniachtchi (there are at least 6 ways of transcribing the Russian letter ‘щ’ into English, ‘shch’ and ‘chtch’ being two of them).
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Andrei Boutyline
May 14, 2011 at 8:53 am
Gabriel; What’s your combined Erdös-bacon number?
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JM
May 14, 2011 at 9:09 pm
JM,
to the best of my knowledge, my Bacon number is 3 via any of multiple paths (Madonna, Danica McKellar, Fred Savage, Ron Perlman, Scott Bakula, etc.). This gives me the same combined Bacon-Erdös number as Danica McKellar, whose Bacon number is one lower and Erdös number is one higher.
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gabrielrossman
May 15, 2011 at 5:59 pm
jeremy hunsinger > Barry Wellman > Frank Harary > Paul Erdos
Barry’s 3, put’s many people in soc at 4 and almost everyone in internet research under 6.
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jeremy hunsinger
May 23, 2011 at 4:01 pm