Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath numbers

[aliseadae]

I've been thinking tonight on Erdös, Bacon, and Sabbath numbers for collaboration of various kinds (mathematical/academic, film, music, respectively) and I've been wondering what the best number for sf/f writing would be. I've found other posts on this, and people were disagreeing whether anthology/being a part of the same TOC would work. If we decide it does, what person would you say is the one to base the number off of? What would your number be? Likewise if it has to be collaboration. Does anyone reading this have an Erdös, Bacon, and/or Sabbath number? Or any other kind of number? What networks are you a part of?

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the possible numbers for anybody who has published more than one short story are, like, 0, 1, and 2. Because this field is just so small. You could deliberately not pick someone like Robert Reed who has been in all the everythings, but that's the only way you'd get anywhere near the number meaning anything interesting.

[aliseadae]

Mm. I'm just not sure what else would be practical to give people numbers other than anthologies. Maybe there is some other less common way.

[ckd]

Collaborations would be the obvious choice since they're the closest analogous behavior to the Erdös and Sabbath definitions, but many of the most prolific writers rarely collaborated AFAICT so I'm not sure it would be a very useful choice.

I have an Erdös number of 3, and know at least two Erdös 2s (obviously including my coauthor); I also know one of the Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath holders, who currently has EBS 11 but with some help we might get that down to 9.

[aliseadae]

It seems like I know a lot of people with Erdös numbers. I'm not sure if I know anyone with a Bacon number.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Martin Greenberg, presumably.