Citations and Erdős Numbers

I’m suffering from a  cold today so I’ve given myself permission to do something silly. I was recently Googling my name (don’t tell me you don’t do that, because I won’t believe you) and I thought I’d have some fun and try Google Scholar instead. It turns out that my work has been cited in some pretty hardcore places, so I’ve added a couple of new pages to this site, just to show off.

Here’s where my software books have been cited. (Actually, at the moment, it’s just the one book – there are too many for the collaborative ones.)

And here’s where Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens has been cited. Yes, it really has. Amazing world we live in, eh?

Of course, I began to wonder if these citations might point towards me having an Erdős Number. Because, obviously, this is something that everyone should aspire to. However, it turns out that the online tools to check collaboration distance (try this one if you want some fun) sometimes get a bit confused. I got quite excited when a couple of my Wrox co-authors appeared to have an Erdős number, only to find that they’d swapped places with someone with a similar name halfway along the chain. In any case,  it turns out that collaboration on an elementary textbook doesn’t really count, although I have to say I’m quite prepared to argue the toss about the Wrox books being elementary if I ever actually do find a collaborator who’s made it all the way. “Erdős Number 5” would look massively cool in my Twitter profile.

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