Talk:Paul Erdős/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

C. C. Rousseau Article for Deletion

This article lists C. C. Rousseau as a collaborator of Paul Erdős, but gives no details. I suggest those who are familiar with this collaboration contribute to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C. C. Rousseau, regarding the signficance of the collaboration, if any. Also, I suggest the collaboration (if and only if signficant) be explained here, or in C. C. Rousseau. --rob 07:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Regarding Work After Death of His Mother

I noticed that a few small things I added were reverted, regarding his 'devotion' to mathematics after the death of his mother. Mayhap I could rewrite it a bit better but I feel it is important to point out Erdős' deep connection to his mother, and how the intensity of his work in mathematics increased after her death. He, like others, sought a sort of solace in the subject. --Shawn M. O'Hare 20:25, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Use of adjectives to describe Erdos

A contributor has questioned the use of "immensely prolific" and "famously eccentric". However, to say Erdos was a prolific mathematician is wrong in the same way that describing an Olympic champion as "an excellent athlete" is wrong. While true, this gives (in both cases) the very wrong impression that there are lots of others who are equally prolific, or equally athletic. You could replace it with "the most prolific mathematician of the last two centuries", which is verifiable, but much more wordy. So I think "immensely" should stay.

Also, "famously eccentric" is also supported by the evidence. If you search for "eccentric mathematician" (with or without quotes) half your references will be to Erdos. To me, this more than qualifies as "famously eccentric".

Much of this is covered later in the article, but since many folks will only read the first line, it should be a summary. "Immensely prolific and famously eccentric" are 99 percent of what any non-mathematician will take away from this article.

See the obituary from the Washington Post for an overview of his life that agrees with these general themes. LouScheffer 17:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Version 0.5 Nomination

Failed on quality: Not comprehensive. Could use sections on: Awards, Family, Education, as well as needing more references. Lastly, border-line on the importance factors. Chuck^(척뉴넘) 07:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Why?

Why did Paul Erdös call children "Epsilons", and how did he mean that? Michael 16:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

As a student of mathematics I can guess that he called them epsilons because in mathematical analysis the Greek letter epsilon is usually used to denote arbitrarily small numbers. It's the sort of pun only a mathematician would laugh at. Tomgreeny 17:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Discursive comment

Discursive comment by EgídioCampos

Erdős number versus Youself number & Neighbor number

This is for anyone — mathematician, professional or not — reflection...

• Despite of I am only a dilettante mathematician, whereas maybe so many others a in fact one (my respects to all!)

1. If you are a Erdős number 1 class, this certainly is merit to both you and Paul Erdős, of course!
2. For anyone: "No matter if your Erdős number is quite near infinity. What matter is how near you are of yourself number!".
3. Yourself number, if you assume it so, needs to be as near as possible of neighbor/neighbour number.

And... that is all folks!

EgídioCampos ^Diz ,

2007.02.14, 18:40 UTC. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.101.69.132 (talk) 18:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

• Note: The above comment was written by me, despite of an accidental diconnection, then remaining as User IP:200.101.69.132. EgídioCampos

More attention to his work

If he's truly the second most prolific mathematician in history, shouldn't the page be more slanted towards his work? Even if he's an interesting person, it seems like he's deserve more than a vague connection to Ramsey numbers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.164.55.63 (talk) 09:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

You are quite........right! --Zero^talk 12:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Quantity has a quality all it's own

About removing this quote: Though I fully understand that this is not in any way a technical summary of his work, I think it expresses the spirit of how Erdös is regarded by mathematicians. It does so in a way that is familiar to a large number of non-mathematicians, a primary audience of Wikipedia. Such an audience would not know how 1500 papers compares to other mathematicians, whether any of his work was regarded as seminal, and so on. It immediately distinguishes him from others such as Kurt Gödel, who wrote relatively few but deep papers. And among mathematicians, if you read this quote and then asked who it applies to, I'd best almost all would say Erdös without a moment's hesitation.

However, I'm the one who stuck this quote in (as well as filling out most of the section on his work), so I'm certainly biased. What do others think? LouScheffer 17:51, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

But wasn't it a quote from Stalin (or am I misreading it)? I don't see how the quote connects to Erdős, and so sticking it in there might be taking a bit of creative liberty. --Cheeser1 20:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Some thought that Stalin's army was not that good, since the tanks were not of the highest quality. But Stalin's point was that the large quantity made up for the lack of individual quality, and made his army great despite the workman-like nature of each of the pieces. Likewise, some doubt Erdös's standing since none of his papers, taken individually, were really exceptional. Others, though, are impressed by the sheer quantity and classify him as as a great mathematician based on the amount of work he produced. LouScheffer 00:56, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting comparison, but we aren't here to make comparisons - is this coming from somewhere? --Cheeser1 04:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Edward Teller

Calling Edward Teller "remarkable thinker" is like calling Adolf Hitler "remarkable leader". Is this the right word? He was "renowned" in his time, that much is neutral, but it probably implies admiration to say "remarkable".

The FOO (Friends of Oppenheimer) never sleep.Lestrade (talk) 01:56, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Amphetamines story

I believe I recall that Graham was the one who bet Erdős over amphetamines. Can others confirm this? Orcrist 22:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is correct, too, but there must be a written reference somewhere. LouScheffer 00:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is in "the man who loved only numbers", page 14. I'll change the main page. LouScheffer 17:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Erdos won the bet but it wasn't about amphetamines rather, methylphenidate, the active ingredient in Ritalin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.138.8 (talk) 19:43, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Didn't the coffee and drugs have an effect on his health? At least, his heart rhythm should have been affected, requiring continual medical attention.Lestrade (talk) 01:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Something like this should be mentioned:

The mathematician Paul Erdös, who famously opined that "a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems," began taking Benzedrine in his late 50s and credited the drug with extending his productivity long past the expiration date of his colleagues. But he eventually became psychologically dependent. In 1979, a friend offered Erdös $500 if he could kick his Benzedrine habit for just a month. Erdös met the challenge, but his productivity plummeted so drastically that he decided to go back on the drug. After a 1987 Atlantic Monthly profile discussed his love affair with psychostimulants, the mathematician wrote the author a rueful note. "You shouldn't have mentioned the stuff about Benzedrine," he said. "It's not that you got it wrong. It's just that I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics to think that they have to take drugs to succeed."

Erdos number distribution

"Some have estimated that 90% of the world's active mathematicians have an Erdős number smaller than 10 (not surprising in the light of the small world phenomenon)."

I actually find this extremely surprising -- in the other direction. I would estimate that 99.9% of the world's active mathematicians have a number of 6 or less. I'm not even a mathematician and the very first paper I wrote gave me a number of 4. I would really like to see a citation for this claim. Arvindn 05:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I'm only now completing my first paper, but it gives me an Erdos number of 3. Not that anecdotal evidence means anything, but I'm fairly sure that there are very few people with finite Erdos numbers greater than 6 or 7.

Let's say that "active mathematician" means someone who published at least one mathematics paper. The outcome of percolation theory (also used in things like the spread of epidemics) is that the graph of collaborations has one huge component with smallish diameter, plus lots of tiny components. It is clearly true for this example. The huge component includes Erdős and nearly everyone in that component will be not far from him (10 sounds too large but I'm not sure; I'd guess 6 or 7). The tiny components include people who only ever published without coauthors, pairs of people who only published together or alone, and so on. The number of such tiny components must be very large so they might together make up a nontrivial fraction (10% say) of all mathematicians. Someone probably compiled actual statistics on this. McKay (Erdős number 1).

Yes yes, that's why I've said only among those with finite Erdos number. I know I've seen the statistics somewhere, and I'm fairly sure that most people fall within 7. I really wish I remembered who I heard that from though. 149.43.x.x 12:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I just took a look at Erdos number (should really have done that before) and it gives a smaller bound: "almost everyone with a finite Erdős number has a number less than 8". Therefore the less than 10 statement should either be deleted from this article or replaced with the statement from Erdos number. Arvindn 23:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I replaced it with 8, which now makes it the same as the Erdos Number page. LouScheffer 00:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I was having some fun looking up the Erdos numbers of my university professors a few days ago. The lowest was 1. The highest was was a 5. I read somewhere that the lowest known number was 7. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.91.65.173 (talk) 21:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

C Class

I have rerated the article as C-Class as I don't believe it meets the B-class criteria. Some serious work needs to be put into this one. ∗ \ / (⁂) 21:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Random Links

It's not absurd, the XKCD haters are just upset that people who aren't married to math can learn about people (pretty awesome people) that they wouldn't normally be exposed to. The Paul Erdos wiki article is history not property. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.108.254.94 (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why people should be so sniffy about xkcd. I'm an intelligent person who doesn't like math. Therefore, there are many otherwise famous people I don't know about. Whenever one comes up (in ANY internet forum), Wikipedia is usually the first place I go to find out what I need to know to make the reference (or joke) make sense. I'd think people here would be grateful for the attention brought to different subjects. On another note, I don't think the Apocalypse joke is about the Erdos Number only - it looks like they're trying to get him to collaborate (at least in name) on a theory or math treatise of some sort - otherwise, why bother with the equations? Collaboration with random people is something (according to the wiki) that he is famous for doing.(unsigned - library lady) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.204.92.169 (talk) 14:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

e.g. XKCD shoutout! http://xkcd.com/599/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.25.98.42 (talk) 06:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah... great.. every time XKCD does a cartoon about something, some group of people feel like they have to write in Wikipedia about it.. like what we need is a 1-1 mapping between his doodles and Wikipedia. It's absurd. Quaeler (talk) 06:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's keep this article XKCD free for once. In fact, can we get a Scientology-like ban for wikipedia? Anytime somebody posts about XKCD or links to XKCD, the edit is rejected. Bar the page on XKCD itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.126.132.70 (talk) 08:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Note. The first two pro-xkcd folks pointed out that someone who read the XKCD comic might be inspired to look up Erdos. This is entirely true, and laudable, but the link in the Erdos article does not help this. The link in the article helps someone who knows about Erdos find one particular and not very informative reference, from among the 980,000 hits reported by google. I don't see why this one is notable, and the huge number of other (more thoughtful, in my opinion) analyses are not.

To do what the posters want, they should modify the XKCD strip to make Erdos's name a link to the Wikipedia article. LouScheffer (talk) 01:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

As long as the subject's been brought up, would someone please explain the XKCD strip to me? What does it mean that Erdos is signing his name to a list of signatures? Just curious. - Brian Kendig (talk) 12:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a lame thing about the Erdős number. See e.g. the part about Hank Aaron. Shreevatsa (talk) 13:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, I get it now, thanks. I was thrown by the panel of the guy scribbling formulae. - Brian Kendig (talk) 13:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The scribbling of the formulae made a paper, which was then "collaborated" on by the queue of people and then it was taken to Erdos to add his name which set everyone's Erdos number to 1. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.42.204 (talk) 15:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

In my view the xkcd mention does not belong here, it might belong at Erdos number, but please see the discussion on the talk page there and seek consensus there before adding it. Paul August ☎ 17:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth; I'm the admin who protected this page (and a related page). I should also add that I think xkcd is one of the funniest comics on the web. I'm also a big Colbert fan. Nonetheless, I don't think Colbert humor or gratuitous xkcd links belong all over the place on Wikipedia, and it's sadly predictable that pages such as this (or Wood, or African Elephant) will need to be protected whenever they are mentioned on a popular and funny medium. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 03:54, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, the irony. Can you guys help me out on Papyrus (typeface)? People are still trying to add xkcd references there.  Grue  09:05, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

When there has already been a consensus not to mention xkcd (ie, at most articles), you can just revert people and point to the talk page; it's not really edit warring most of the time. And you can add a hidden note in the article saying something like "don't add xkcd stuff here without seeing the talk page", although I think people often don't read those and go ahead and add their stuff anyway. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:15, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Corrected common grammatical and mathematical error

Erdős published more papers than any mathematician in history.

Speaking as a copy-editor, this common error should be much easier to explain syllogistically to a mathematically-oriented readership than as a grammatical error to a random readership. It leads to the following interesting, and absurd, syllogism:

Erdős published more papers than any mathematician in history.
Paul Erdős was a mathematician (in human history).
Therefore, Paul Erdős published more papers than Paul Erdős.

This should make it very easy to understand the need for the word "other":

Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history.

Since Erdős is a member of the "mathematicians" subset of humans, he must be distinguished from the remainder of the set to be designated as "more than" (greater than") all remaining members of the set.

Commonly seen:
"Wyoming has fewer residents than any state in the United States". (Wyoming itself is a state in the US. It can't have fewer residents than itself.)

Note that there is a grammatical alternative that avoids this common trap:

"Erdős published the most papers of any mathematician in history." "Wyoming has the fewest residents of any state in the US.".

Using "most" and "fewest" instead of "more than" and "less than" leaves the individual within the universe under comparison, avoiding the need for the often-forgotten modifier "other".
If only it were this easy to explain to non-mathematicians!

Regards, Unimaginative Username (talk) 04:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Immensely prolific and notably eccentric

These are likely the most notable facts about Erdos, as indicated by a variety of sources.

In the same we distinguish between an 'athlete' and an 'olympic athlete', we need to distinguish between folks who are merely 'prolific', and those who are immensely prolific. You could state that he's the second (or even first, depending on how you count) most prolific mathematician in history, though to my taste "immensely prolific" reads better and gets the point across much more tersely (the details are later in the article). In contrast, if you search for ' "prolific mathematician" -Erdős -erdos -euler -Erdös' in Google, (to remove Erdos and Euler, the two most prolific) you'll find at least 2500 other references to mathematicians described as prolific. This includes many who have produced much less, and are far less well known for their prolific output, then Erdos.

Likewise, when the *title* of your article in Time magazine starts with how eccentric you are, you are notably eccentric. Article on Erdos in Time magazine. The second paragraph starts with "In a profession with no shortage of oddballs, he was the strangest." Similarly, the first sentence of the Encyclopedia Britannica article calls him "legendarily eccentric" (and also notes his is the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century). LouScheffer (talk) 15:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Neither of those words have any objective measurements attached to them; they are unnecessary modifiers per WP:PEACOCK, especially in the lead. Furthermore, it's unnecessary to use them because the article goes into detail about (1) how much he published, etc., and (2) numerous examples of his eccentricity, satisfying Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Clarity#Do not hide the important facts; that is, rather than using two peacocky adjectives, the article provides factual and verifiable detail showing the level of output and examples of his quirkiness. I'm adding this to Wikipedia:Third opinion to get a better consensus. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:49, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I come here from WP:3O. Tough call: even if they are WP:PEACOCK they are indeed reasonable when applied to Erdos. I would suggest to make both statements more objective. Examples

• "immensely prolific" = "the N-th most prolific mathematician..." (give an objective qualification of how much he was prolific with respect to others in his field)
• "notably eccentric" = "described as 'legendarily eccentric' and 'the strangest' " (with refs)

Hope it helps. --Cyclopia^talk 16:05, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the third opinion. The lede should summarize (not duplicate) the article, for the benefit of the folks that only read that far, or only look at the initial screen and never scroll down. Therefore I think the adjectives serve an important use in the first paragraph. (which also by Wikipedia policy should not have references for non-controversial information that is explicitly referenced in the body of the article.) I agree that "immensely", "extremely", or even "very" are not quantitative, but that's the right level of description in the lead - "second most prolific in history by page count", "most prolific of the 20th century" or more numeric possibilities repeat points already included below. "notably", on the other hand, *does* have an objective meaning - one that is easily satisfied, since both Time magazine and Encyclopedia Brittanica noted it in the very first lien of each article.

Useful (IMO) info from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section):

• "Leads are usually written at a greater level of generality than the body."
  • This is why immensely is better in the lead. "Second only to Euler by number of pages; first by number of articles" goes in the body.
• "It is even more important here than for the rest of the article that the text be accessible."
• "the emphasis given to material in the lead should reflect its relative importance to the subject, according to reliable sources"
  • In this case, reliable sources mention both these in the title, first sentence, and first paragraph. Clearly they think this is important.

More opinions are of course welcome, LouScheffer (talk) 17:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

LouScheffer, I agree with the spirit of your comment, but "immensely prolific" is not the way to go IMHO. It's too vague and too peacock-y. I would simply put "most prolific of the 20th century": it is objective, clear and it doesn't go into the details like the main article. As for the eccentric: we can put "legendarily eccentric" between quotes and putting the Britannica source. This way the lead would sound like this:

...was a "legendarily eccentric" Hungarian mathematician, the most prolific of the 20th century.

What do you think? --Cyclopia^talk 19:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Or, better. I notice that the prolific output of Erdos is completely explained in the second sentence of the lead. I would therefore avoid repeating the information. I suggest:

Paul Erdős (occasionally spelled Erdos or Erdös; Hungarian: Erdős Pál, pronounced [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory. He is also known for his "legendarily eccentric" personality

This seems to contain all necessary info, without vague terms or repetitions, staying general. --Cyclopia^talk 19:12, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Works for me; avoids the Peacock issue. Nice work! OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 19:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

The words by LouScheffer ("immensely prolific and notably eccentric") are correct, but we have to be realistic and acknowledge that such wording is not going to work: whereas it is obviously true in this case, such wording screams its violation of WP:PEACOCK. The alternative by Cyclopia avoids the problem and nicely explains the points in a way that a reader can accept (while the "immensely prolific and notably eccentric" would be ignored by many readers who are used to media hyperbole). Johnuniq (talk) 01:03, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

This, to me, is the heart of the problem. No one disputes they are true when applied to Erdos, but worries they will be applied to other lesser people. This to me seems a very weak reason to remove a clearly true and well-sourced statement. Absent this concern, I still like the original wording better ("Paul Erdős was an immensely prolific and notably eccentric Hungarian mathematician.") since it states the four main facts that most people would look for in a straightforward, direct, and easy to read way. It's just better writing (and IIRC, I'm not the author of this sentence, just the defender). To address these concerns, I'd prefer to violate Wikipedia's preference for not using references in the first sentence. This would address the concern by showing that if you do use these terms, you better back them up right away and in detail. This would then look like: "Paul Erdős was an immensely prolific and notably eccentric Hungarian mathematician.". I'd much rather see the standard that you can use a peacock word if it's justified, rather than banning them entirely on the grounds someone might abuse them. After all, you're not paranoid if everyone *really is* out to get you.

Also, I'd change the second sentence to "Working with hundreds of collaborators, Erdos published more papers than any other mathematician in history". This is better, IMO, since the next fact, after prolific and eccentric, is probably the social aspect of widespread collaboration. LouScheffer (talk) 14:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I changed the article so there is now direct support for the terms that would otherwise be "peacock" terms if they were not true in this particular case. This is not intended to imply the discussion is closed, so please comment or edit further if you think this is inadequate. LouScheffer (talk) 15:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I edited to the version I proposed above, instead, which seemed to have collected some more consensus. There is no need to vaguely state that he was "immensely prolific" when there is a sentence immediately after explaining. "Immensely" is also a poor choice -it means nothing; "exceptionally" could be better, if really needed, but I really don't think it's the case. --Cyclopia^talk 16:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Quotation Attributed to Alfréd Rényi

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

I've also seen this attributed to Alfred Renyi instead of Erdős. Does anyone know for sure which is correct? --Zundark, Sunday, April 7, 2002

There seems to be some confusion as to who said it (I've seen it written that Erdős was quoting Renyi but more often that Erdős said it, but Renyi's autobiography claims it ... so I put in a fudge factor) DavidWBrooks 17:13 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I found a link probably containing the original quote.. but did Erdos speak german? (i guess yes) Link: http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/teaching/curricula/warumstudium.html "Ein Mathematiker ist eine Maschine die Kaffee trinkt und Sätze macht" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.130.70.33 (talk) 11:49, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

'had' and erdos number vs 'has' one.

In general, Paul Erdos 'has' an Erdos number, not 'had' one, since that would falsely imply this attribute no longer applies since his death. (Basically, the number still exists, and hence *is*, despite the fact the Erdos is dead, and hence 'was'.) From perhaps the most official site on this Information about the Erdös Number Project, with emphasis added:

Erdös’s Erdös number is 0. Erdös’s coauthors have Erdös number 1. People other than Erdös who have written a joint paper with someone with Erdös number 1 but not with Erdös have Erdös number 2, and so on. If there is no chain of coauthorships connecting someone with Erdös, then that person’s Erdös number is said to be infinite.

This applies to people other than Erdos who are also dead. For example, Some Famous People with Finite Erdös Numbers states:

Felipe Voloch found what seems to be the oldest mathematicican known to have a finite Erdös number, Richard Dedekind (1831-1916). His number is at most 7, via this path:

LouScheffer (talk) 18:40, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, in general Erdos numbers can change after a person's death, as new papers are published. For example, a link might go Erdos->A->B->C->D, giving D an Erdos number of 4. But even if Erdos and D are both dead for many years, C could publish a paper with A, reducing D's number to 3. This shows that the numbers have an existence independent of the life of the author. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LouScheffer (talk • contribs) 00:42, February 5, 2011

And posthumous publication is not impossible. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:02, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Bulletized supporting material

• Reference works. The proposed form is given by Britannica, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, and Columbia. Britannica uses a double acute for the Hungarian city of Győr, so they certainly have the ability to publish such an accent.
• Author name. The subject's collected writing was originally published as Paul Erdös: the Art of Counting: Selected Writings (1973), and is currently available as The Mathematics of Paul Erdös, I-II (1996). So the umlauted form can be considered a nom de mathématiques. When he published a paper in a journal based outside Hungary, he was "P. Erdös" or "P. Erdos":
  • P. Erdös and G. Szckeres, "A Combinatorial Problem in Geometry", Classic Papers in Combinatorics
  • P. Erdös and A. H. Stone, "On the Structure of Linear Graphs", Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., Volume 52, Number 12 (1946), 1087-1091.
• Google Books. For English language GBooks since 1990, I get 1,880 (464 deghosted) for the umlaut, 705 (186 deghosted) for the double acute.
• Other sources. Oakland University has The Erdös Number Project.
• Style issues. Chicago style is to spell names as they are given in Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary. (CMOS, §8.3). Merriam-Webster gives the subject as Paul Erdos (no diacritic). Sorry no link for this one. Kauffner (talk) 01:23, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Policy on Extended-ASCII Titles

What's our policy about extended-ASCII titles? Should the default Paul Erdos article be at Paul_Erd%F6s or Paul_Erdos? --The Cunctator

I don't think we have a policy yet, since non-Ascii characters are new in Wikipedia, but personally I prefer the correct title (i.e. with ö), because that way the headline of the article looks right. We certainly need a redirect from Paul Erdos though, so that the page can be found be people without fancy keyboards. AxelBoldt

There's LDC's Proposed Wikipedia policy on foreign characters over on the meta wiki, but there's no consensus. Summary as far as titles: LDC wants all non-ASCII characters banned from titles -- drop most diacritics, convert umlauts to "e"s, ß to "ss". In the talk page, I disagree and say that titles with non-ASCII characters ought to be preferred where appropriate, with plain-ASCII versions as redirects. There's also some talk of a #TITLE code whereby the title shown at the top of the screen could be set to something different from the article title. Brion VIBBER, Monday, April 1, 2002

I'm in favour of full diacritics wherever possible, with search engines being left to interfile these things as required. Even so, I think it will still be a while before Unicode is generally understood by all systems. A practical goal in the shorter term would be to at least implement the characters in ISO 8859-1, and give people a chance to catch up to that. Personally I find "Erdös" easiest to write by using Alt+0246 instead of the ampersand format; the F6 format doesn't reproduce at all, and I understand that the people using German ASCII would do something else again. Eclecticology

We use ISO-8859-1 right now; the %F6 is merely a URL-encoding of the character "Ö" in ISO-8859-1, and isn't something users should ever have to manually type. As far as Unicode, the current plan (see Wikitech-L archives) is to switch everything to UTF-8 internally, with downconversion to a legacy character set (for English, ISO-8859-1) for browsers that don't report themselves as grokking UTF-8. This should keep older browsers and search engines (such as Google) that have no or buggy UTF-8 support to still work fine. Brion VIBBER

I agree, but I would go further: search engines should

• match exact matches first, and then
• fall back to ignoring diacritics (as if ASCII-only), and then
• fall back to Metaphone or other similar scheme (just replacing all vowel sequences by '*' normalises to a sufficient extent for many purposes)

Just looking at the failed searches shows that about half of them would succeed given some very simple normalisation. Many of the others would work if a combination of guess-the-spaces and stemming was used. Wikipedia is small compared to the Web, and so techniques like this will improve recall without deluging the reader in dross, providing that exact matches and article-title matches take priority. The Anome

Incorrect Title

Why do we have his name in the title written (incorrectly) as Erdös? It should be Erdős or Erdős (as it is written correctly on the line just below). Anyone care to make corrections everywhere (including on pages linkink here)?

That's Unicode point "LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DOUBLE ACUTE" Erdős, by the way.

Testing: Erdős

note -- Unicode code point 337 (hex #151)

Title Still Incorrect

This is a featured article but it's title is still incorrect. In hungarian the correct form is „Pál Erdős”, or maybe in hunglish the „Paul Erdős” form is admissible. „Paul Erdös” is an absolutely mixed mutant chimaera form. The english version „Paul Erdoes” or „Paul Erdős” is less socking then, but the immaculate form is „Pál Erdős”, with the character ő instead of ö.Gubbubu 13:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• There is a reason for that. Having characters like ő in titles causes various sofware problems for people who do not have the appropriate character on their computer. (There have been cases of article histories not showing correctly, etc.)

This was already once mentioned higher on this talk page, and the situation has not changed. The software still has difficulties with handling "ő" in character titles. Andris 14:29, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Currently only ISO-8859-1 is supported. This has nothing to do with difficulties, just unwillingness, or a policy not to support Unicode in article names. Since the correct title is not possible to render in ISO-8859-1, I suggest Paul Erdos as the title, which is easier to type.

Dbenbenn, thanks for putting the title limitation template. It looks like it is the best solution at the time being given the above arguments. BACbKA 17:13, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sure thing. I've also been going through the [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Paul_Erd%F6s|what links here]] and [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Erd%F6s number|what links to Erdös number]] lists and changing Erdos and Erdös to Erdős. There are plenty of other occurrences of his name that need to be fixed. --Dbenbenn 00:51, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

---

To RTC: your attempt to rename this page renamed it to "Paul ErdÅ?s". Please don't do that. It will have to remain Erdös for now, until the software can cope with "ő" in article titles. -- Anon.

Umlaut is not Double Accute accent

This page should remain under the title "Paul Erdos", not "Paul Erdös". The man's name is not written with an umlaut, but with a double acute. They may look similar but they ain't the same diacritical! --Urhixidur 04:10, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we can't delete Paul Erdos to allow the move because of the famous "block-compression" problem. Maybe try again in a few months. Otherwise we could delete it and merge page histories. Actually, the entire page history between March 31 2002 and April 17 2004 seems to be missing... somebody made it a copyvio at some point and the Paul Erdös page got deleted along with all its history, apparently. --Curps 04:17, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was hoping to find a discussion about the man or his work. Instead it's just an argument about how to spell his name "properly". How sad. =scv

Wikipedia talk pages are not for discussing the topic of the article, but for discussing the article itself. --Zero 23:40, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with most recent move of this page

I'm not sure I agree with the move of this page from "Paul Erdős" to "Pál Erdős (especially after I've been going around fixing hudreds of links as a result of the move from "Paul Erdos" to Paul Erdős". --Paul August ☎ June 29, 2005 21:17 (UTC)

I am using a Windows PC right now with a recent version of Internet Explorer, and the final vowel does not appear. I think we should not use a character in the title which does not display in one of the most common software configurations. --Jonathunder 22:26, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

I think fundamentally the argument is going to be: Wikipedia is not UScentric. While there is some merit to that argument, there are pitfalls too. I personally think the article should be spelled the way he was known. Perhaps we ought to search his publications for reference? TheChief (PowWow) 23:22, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

He was know, in English, as Paul. --Paul August ☎ 23:57, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Spelling it in a way most browsers can display correctly so that most readers can read it is also a consideration, and I don't think there is anything "UScentric" about that. Jonathunder 16:12, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

Of course you don't, because you are I assume from the US? There is the popular belief that the US is the internet. While not true, there is also some merit to the argument, especially given that this is the english wikipedia and such accents don't exist in english. I suggest a straw poll. --TheChief (PowWow) 17:46, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The accent business is only a secondary consideration. The determining factor is which name is the most common version of the spelling of his name in English, in conformity with Wikipedian policy (see WP:UE). As far as I know the consensus on Wikipedia has been that that spelling is "Paul Erdős", not "Paul Erdos" and not "Pál Erdős". This agrees with my experience. By the way (not that it really matters, but I get so few chances to work this into the conversion ;-), my Erdős number is 3, so I know where of I speak, somewhat. --Paul August ☎ 19:23, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

His name in English (not specifically the United States) is "Paul Erdos" or "Paul Erdös", not "Paul Erdős" or "Pál Erdős". (And my Erdös number is 1 <grin> -- and I actually saw him print his name for the audience in a lecture, once. Definitely Paul Erdös). (I hope all those "ö" characters are the same.) Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the Open Directory Project also selected "Paul Erdös" as the name of the category -- individual sites about him are titled the same way that site refers to him. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:22, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Diacritics again

There's absolutely no reason to use an umlaut. If the correct diacritic can't be displayed, it's better to use none at all. There aren't different "levels" of diacritics, like a proper double accute accent is the best but an umlaut is "almost as good". That's silly. It's like using `backticks' instead of proper quotes. Either use the correct character or its closest ASCII equivalent, not some non-ASCII character that might be a little more widespread and looks sort of like it. —Keenan Pepper 06:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

What? It isn't just about aesthetics, you know. Why in the world would you want to hide this page from someone who knows it has an umlaut in it, and enters "Paul Erdös" in a search engine?

None at all is better? You thing people are better off with a little square or a question mark? Or maybe even really nothing, just "Paul Erds"? You are strange.

Google	hits
"Paul Erdős"	192,000
"Paul Erdös"	177,000
"Paul Erdos"	192,000
AltaVista	hits
"Paul Erdős"	1,740
"Paul Erdös"	71,400
"Paul Erdos"	145,000

The ö is, of course, part of all the extensions of ASCII. It works in all browsers using English. Note the two-digit Unicode numbers, U+00D6 Ö and U+00F6 ö.

Even aesthetically, there is a problem, of course. Many people have seen, and some of us remember making, an umlauted o on a typewriter by overstriking it with the " character. So visually, even upon seeing the character in Erdős, a great many people, even if they see a little longer squiggles above the o, are not going to realize that this is a different character, rather than simply a different font.

Face it. Hungarian isn't really a well known language. The letter ö, on the other hand, is familiar to most English speakers, because the languages in which it is used are closer relatives of our language. And if Hungary's designers had any sense at all, they wouldn't try to distinguish two different letters in their language as Ö and Ő, so it's no wonder nobody bothers to try to learn it. --Gene Nygaard 06:57, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Want another good reason? Take a look at book titles such as [this one. --Gene Nygaard 07:09, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm letting you have it your way because I really don't care that much, but I'd like to point out a few things.

• It just kills me that your edit summary for reverting is so, don't get in a revert war.

"Why in the world would you want to hide this page from someone who knows it has an umlaut in it, and enters "Paul Erdös" in a search engine?"

• Um, Paul Erdös is still a redirect to here, because it's a common misspelling of his name. A redirect is good, mentioning it in the article is bad.

"None at all is better? You thing people are better off with a little square or a question mark? Or maybe even really nothing, just "Paul Erds"? You are strange."

• No, you completely misinterpreted what I said. The letter o is not a diacritic, it's a letter. So Paul Erdős with no diacritics is Paul Erdos, not Paul Erds.
• What is popular is not always right. Google statistics and whether or not Hungarian is a "well-known language" are irrelevant.

"The ö is, of course, part of all the extensions of ASCII."

• Right. Extensions. That means it's not an element of the standard ASCII character set.

"Hungary's designers"

• WTF? Last time I checked, Hungarian was a natural langauge, not a conlang.
• BTW, my grandmother's Hungarian, you jerk. —Keenan Pepper 00:02, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

In regard the table, I suspect Google disregards the diacritic in "ő". I can't imagine that many webmasters knowing how to generate it. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Diacritics in page title

Since the original graph-written form is PAUL ERDÖS — others maybe adaptative, transliterated ones — I have changed all present occurrences of the name ad causam from <another form> to Paul Erdös.

I think doing this is to respect the culture and the memory of each country, nation and people all over the World, don' you [...]?

More: at the section "Collaborations", I have put all the names in alphabetical order. This makes the section quick and easy to consult, do you agree?

However, I have not changed Paul Erdős as a title of the present article. So — if you were in accordance with me — I think the title must be corrected from Paul Erdős, as it currently appears, to Paul Erdös. Then, accordingly, all other forms maybe (must be!) converted into disambiguation ones, with redirect to this main and preferable form of the article.

Respects to Paul Erdös!

Best regards and wiki-success!

Egidiofc 19:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Egidiofc, I had to revert your change since you are simply wrong. His original name is Erdős, only changed in later publications because it is hard to type/typeset on English-language equipment on which the letter <ő>oes not exist. Doing things in "the memory of each country" is very nice of you, but counterproductive if you don't know anything about the country itself. -- Marcika 21:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Marcika,

I have searched for the truly correct form, as in accordance to Hungarian Alphabet, as — more important — in obligatory deference to the mathematician ad causam. Most if Erdős is the correct, original written form — as you have pointed so conclusively.

Despite of this, I think I took a not well founded decision. Why? Because, simply because "all possible sources had not been explored yet — by me, of course".

However, I ask you some questions:

1. Do you know sufficiently Hungarian Language — and, so, Hungarian Alphabet? I hope so!
2. If no, have you reported to/seen sufficiently well accredited source(s)?

Dear and zealous Mr. Marcika, if I am simply wrong, as you have said — and you, in accordance, naturally right! — then your reverting action seemed to be more than necessary: it was, in fact, an obligatory one.

The following website The Hungarian Alphabet shows the complete Hungarian Alphabet (with all phonetic issues). More: our notable Wikipedia, at Hungarian Language article does the same. However, since at ‘’wiki’’-environment, knowledge is always changing to meet that final goal (will us arrive there?...), there remains some doubt with respect to the correct form. Most when referring to a name carrying letter/sign from a extended neo-latin new set. This claims to care.

• On the other side, at the section "Collaborations", I have put all the names in alphabetical order. That intended to make that section much more quick and easy to consult, don't you agree? An others more... So...: Why have you reverted too?

Finally, for my yet deficient issues, may you excuse-me. For your — perhaps: I hope so!... — corrections, EgídioCampos thanks you very much. And Paul Erdős and Hungarian Culture too!

Best wiki-productions!

EgídioCampos, 2007.02.05, 13:55 UTC

Not havinging seen "ő" in his name before Wikipedia, I was skeptical, at first. But I now believe it is correct in the original Hungarian. Most entries with "ö" have been properly created as redirects; if you see any missing, you're quite welcome to create redirects with "ö" and with "o", as is suggested in our guidelines on redirects. Also note that changing the alternative language links is quite inappropriate — there, we need to reflect what actually appears in that langauge's Wikipedia, rather than what we may believe to be correct.

And you alphabetized his collaborators by first name, rather than the traditional last name. (Note that I've actually met him a number of times, and have an Erdős number of 1.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Marcika,

Thank you very much for your so promptly correspondence!

Yes, of course, the purpose of this — mine, yours et alii — issues is more and more optimization of Knowledge at Wikipedian Corpus.

So, I am very glad you — a native Hungarian speaker — have had a "piece of time", say a "Erdős quantum time" (who knows?...) for learning to a "Erdős number new mathematician [Lim x (x approaching to ∞)]" (I am this mathematician...).

Once more, I wish to thank you. And, now, I can say "Hungarian Culture" was honoured.

Best wiki-salutations!

EgídioCampos, 2007.02.05, 20:55 UTC.

• Respectable Mr. Marcika,

• Respectable others Wiki-Editors,

For the sake of most quick and easy lecture on this article, I have alphabetized some topics again. I hope it will maybe useful for all.

The diacritic question has been entirely and promptly solved, as above written.

EgídioCampos, 2007.02.06, 19:10 UTC.

Requested move: Paul Erdős → Paul Erdös

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Favonian (talk) 17:02, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

---

Paul Erdős → Paul Erdös – This proposal would replace a double acute accent with a more conventional umlaut. The proposed form is several times more common on Google Books and is used by reference works, including Britannica. It is also in the title of both of the subject's books, and it is way he is given as the author of numerous papers. Kauffner (talk) 01:23, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Survey

• Question Oppose Hi Kauffner, see family name Erdős; evidently many of your sources are not reliable sources for Hungarian spelling. So why should we follow "unreliable sources" for Hungarian spelling when "reliable sources" also exist? (btw the difference between the two vowels is illustrated by en.wikipedia article ő which has the following table:)

short	a	e	i	o	ö	u	ü
long	á	é	í	ó	ő	ú	ű

In ictu oculi (talk) 12:06, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Reply. I don't see this issue as relevant because WP:UE says to follow "English language usage" rather than Hungarian. Kauffner (talk) 18:22, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. We should spell people's names the way they themselves preferred, unless this causes insuperable difficulty for the reader. But in this case, links and re-directs are quite capable of making the use of a slightly less common character perfectly OK. LouScheffer (talk) 12:08, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
  • You obviously didn't read the nomination, which does not discuss technical difficulties. What makes you think the subject preferred the double acute? This is an exercise in mind reading. I assume his name appears with an umlaut on his books and papers because that's the way he liked it. Kauffner (talk) 12:50, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

    Your assumption may be mistaken, since he signed his name with a double-acute accent, see citations below. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 21:37, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

    • Kauffner, what makes you think LouScheffer "obviously didn't read the nomination," maybe he read it and made the same conclusion as myself, that you are following "unreliable sources." As far as telling LouScheffer "This is an exercise in mind reading," (which it isn't), what then is your assumption of what Paul Erdős "liked"? For your assumption to be correct that would require e.g. that Stanford had a set of metal-type Hungarian long vowels for typesetting in 1946 yet Paul Erdős asked Stanford to not use it, but use a short vowel instead "because that's the way he liked it"? Please address the question above. Thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
      • I have decided to adjust to the post-literate zeitgeist and bulletize my supporting material. Kauffner (talk) 01:23, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
        • Rather than bulletize the supporting material, dealing with the issue of whether the supporting material can be counted as "reliable for the statement being made" (WP:IRS "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context.") This second paragraph of WP:IRS is important. I have changed my question to oppose since it doesn't seem likely that the question can be answered, or that any evidence that the misspelled sources are reliable for spelling will be forthcoming. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:32, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. In the era of metal typesetting, Hungarian diacritics were undoubtedly less available to the average printer than those used in western European languages such as French or German, and using German umlauts may have been adopted by publishers as a lesser evil than using no diacritics at all. But there is no reason why we should be constrained by the technical limitations of the past. The list of references also seems a bit selective, for instance Wolfram MathWorld uses the Hungarian diacritic.[1] This nomination is comparable to citing old texts that used the apostrophe by necessity rather than ʻokina for Hawaiian names, and then claiming that the apostrophe is therefore the correct version that should be perpetuated forever. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:51, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

PS, here are two handwritten letters with signatures. The first clearly shows a double-acute; the second looks more like a single-acute, but not at all like an umlaut. Here is another signature with double-acute accent. And here a much larger and clearer signature. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 21:34, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

PPS, here is the cover of a book about him and his work: Erdős on Graphs by the mathematicians Fan Chung and Ronald Graham. Thus, within the field of mathematics as well as within the domain of biography, the correct accent is used rather than the umlaut when modern typography and fonts and character sets make it trivially feasible. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 21:47, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose I think it seems the current spelling is the correct one from the Hungarian. I've asked for additional comment from the hungarian talk page (I note in the hungarian wiki, it is spelled the same way: Erdős Pál --KarlB (talk) 18:14, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Either use the correct diacritic or drop it entirely. Wikipedia does not suffer and need not reflect archaic typographical limitations. —  AjaxSmack  20:15, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. The Hungarian long accent is correct and is now the majority use in published mathematics. As an editor of a combinatorics journal, I insist on it. Incidentally, the book "The Art of Counting" given as evidence has Erdös on the cover but about an even mixture of Erdös and Erdős inside. As someone who knew him, I can also suggest one reason why many of his early papers (but far from all) used the wrong accent, in addition to the typesetting problem: he didn't care about things like that. Even if a coauthor wrote it incorrectly, he wouldn't have said anything. Similarly he never corrected anyone who mispronounced his name. McKay (talk) 01:20, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
  • In his post of 01:29, 29 January 2006 above, Arthur Rubin claimed he saw the subject write his name with a umlaut at a lecture. So everyone has a personal anecdote, and you prove anything you want with them. Kauffner (talk) 10:03, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
    • Rubin later agreed that the Hungarian accent is correct.[2] McKay (talk) 02:51, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
• Support Wikipedia is based on WP:UCN and this being English Wikipedia, WP:UE, we should only use the prominent forms, and if the subject is found in many English RSes, then the prominent form found in English. And WP:OFFICIALNAME, whatever a person's name is, it does not mean that their name is actually how they are known, look at Lady Gaga. If as McKay said, the person himself did not care how it was spelt, then we should use the one more commonly found, given that McKay says that modern usage is evenly split, then historical usage tips the difference, as usage has not been shown to have shifted over yet. Wikipedia does not lead the charge in changes, it follows. 70.24.251.208 (talk) 04:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

  Do you not attach importance to the fact that he signed his own name with the double-acute accent? (see signature links above, especially the last one). Shrugging off misspellings and mispronunciations of one's name is not the same as adopting the misspelling as your actual name. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 05:29, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

  McKay didn't say that modern usage is evenly split, he said that usage within the book The Art of Counting was evenly split. As Kauffner cited in his exposition above, that book was published in 1973 [3]... almost four decades ago. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 05:29, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

70.24.251.x Hi, those arguments aren't new, you've made this argument on many RMs, although difficult to follow since your service provider keeps changing the last 3 digits, but in all those can you give a precedent, an example of any biography on en.wp which is deliberately mispelled because of following inaccurate English sources? In ictu oculi (talk) 08:19, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

You mean like Mark Antony? Where the original Latin-alphabet name, clearly historically attested to, in the original Latin, is MARCUS ANTONIUS ? (which is all-caps because that was how it was written). Instead of the name, as the person wrote it, as those who used the language wrote it, as those in his country wrote it, we write it using WP:UE, WP:UCN. 70.24.251.208 (talk) 05:33, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

In centuries past there was a strong tendency to anglicize both personal names and place names, so we say Moscow instead of Moskva, and Joan of Arc instead of Jeanne, and some of these traditional names persist to this day. But this is no longer the case, certainly not for 20th-century figures and later. We do use Paul instead of Pál, however, as Erdős himself did. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose – Kauffner has been upbraided several times already for his negligently amateurish attempts to use google book search to get stats on diacritics. When I looked at the book hits for Paul Erdos there, ALL of the first 10 used the double acute accent. It's not clear what he is referring to when he says both of the subject's own books use the umlaut; this one? this one? this one? They are get his name right; we should leave it right, too, even if some other web encyclopedias don't. Dicklyon (talk) 05:36, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
• I get 7,780 total post-1990 English-language Google Book hits for "Paul Erdos". That works out to 24 percent usage for umlaut, 9 percent for the double acute. Kauffner (talk) 18:22, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• Note that a NY Times article on spelling names explicitly says "If you use another source, online or elsewhere, be sure it’s reliable. (Don’t take a Google poll and go with the spelling that gets the most hits.)" LouScheffer (talk) 19:15, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, I neglected to mention that I was searching GBooks, not the Web. In any case, my No. 1 argument for the umlaut has always been that Britannica and similar references spell the subject's name with this diacritic. Kauffner (talk) 08:27, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Kauffner. Same question again; Why are you not addressing WP:IRS guideline "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context."? What makes you think that the majority of Google books are automatically (a) "reliable for the statement being made" and (b) "the best such source for that context"?.

Second question. We know the spelling is Erdős, like every other Hungarian Erdős. You do recognise that this is the correct spelling in Hungarian?

Third question. Do you know of any en.wp article which mispells a Latin-alphabet European surname by following majority Google Books sources? In ictu oculi (talk) 20:38, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi Kauffner, I see no answer here, but now same subject has resurfaced at Talk:Edouard René Hambye → Édouard René Hambye, where a 1987 metal-typeset article is being proposed as a "reliable source" for spelling of a Édouard, it can be addressed there instead. Basically the same WP:IRS issue... In ictu oculi (talk) 03:35, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The article title is not a "statement" concerning Hungarian spelling, so there is no need to find a reliable source for Hungarian spelling. We "follow English-language usage" (WP:UE) and "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language" (WP:DIACRITICS). I have no interest in how other people named Erdos might spell their names in Hungarian, and I fail to see how this question is relevant to the titling issue. Kauffner (talk) 16:55, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Kauffner,

Okay, you may have no interest in how the family name Erdős is spelled in Hungary, or that the name Erdös (short vowel) does not exist in Hungary, but other editors will an interest, for accuracy, and consistency - as MOS states "consistent with related articles" - if we mispell on Hungarian called Erdős on the basis of low-quality unreliable-for-spelling sources then we should apply low-quality unreliable-for-spelling sources to all.

Re WP:IRS, same question again "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language" (WP:DIACRITICS). What makes you consider that unreliable-for-purpose English sources which cannot print long-vowel ő are more reliable for the spelling of Hungarian surnames than reliable-for-purpose English sources which can print long-vowel ő? Why must we prefer spelling mistakes? Why is it so important to get the name wrong? In ictu oculi (talk) 23:54, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Based on Aufrette's sources which show that he himself wrote his name with double-acute, so that should be taken as the "correct" form of his name which the Wikipedia article should follow. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 03:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Eine Maschine, die Kaffee in Sätze verwandelt

The present text claims that the original language for the infamous dictum by (probably) Rényi was German. I can't find any evidence for this claim, and think that this passage should be removed as unverifiable original research, unless someone can produce a source.  --Lambiam 12:08, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia article on Alfréd Rényi has this claim, with citation to the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 15:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

When (incorrectly, source in article now) ascribed to Erdős it is "umwandelt," though "verwandelt" sounds better, per Kafka. In ictu oculi (talk) 20:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The Russian Wikipedia, in their article on Rényi, gives the sentence in Russian («Математик — это автомат по переработке кофе в теоремы.»), with the same citation to the MacTutor archive as the German Wikipedia. Can I use this as proof for the claim that Rényi's quip was originally uttered in Russian? While the German Wikipedia gives the sentence in German, it does not state that this is supposed to be the original language. The MacTutor archive gives the sentence in English (... a mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems) without discussing the issue of the original language. I think the Russian Wikipedia just gave a translation from English into Russian, and the German Wikipedia from English into German. Same story for the Dutch, French, Hungarian, and Spanish Wikipedias (except that they have no citation at all). None of these sources, reliable or not, makes any explicit claim about the original language, and they each give the sentence in a different language. So the issue is still unresolved.  --Lambiam 01:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

David Eppstein has found a posting by János Pach stating that the original language was most likely Hungarian: Pach, János (December 16, 2010), Anastasatos’ Conjecture. That would then make it: „A matematikus olyan gép, amely kávéból tételeket készít.”  --Lambiam 01:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The source Jonathan Borwein, Keith Devlin Experimentelle Mathematik: Eine beispielorientierte Einführung, now cited for a German rendition, is the translation into German of their originally English-language book The Computer as Crucible: An Introduction to Experimental Mathematics, 2008, ISBN 978-1-56881-343-1, which gives the phrase in English, again without discussion of an original language. They cite this to the biography Bruno Schechter (2000), My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdős, p. 155, ISBN 0-684-85980-7. There (and on several other pages) the quip is given in English, without mentioning German.  --Lambiam 02:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The German-pun claim was added to the article on December 8, 2010, by an IP that geolocates to Saarbrücken. Pach posts on December 16, 2010, that he received an email message with "an interesting conjecture" from a computer science student at the University of Saarland, which happens to be located in Saarbrücken. I think I have identified the source of the claim, and it is highly original research, such as results from drinking too much coffee and then aus dem Kaffeesatz lesen.  --Lambiam 02:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to all. This is more than enough to keep out the German reference unless a reliable source for it appears. McKay (talk) 02:42, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I saw that 2010 email but Google Books is indicating that Number Theory Springer 1995 has the phrase "die Kaffee in Sätze verwandelt" without the page being accessible. If the date 1995 is correct, then the phrase dates back 17 years at least. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

In response to the query ["Maschine die Kaffee in Sätze verwandelt"], Google Books also returns Proofs from THE BOOK (ISBN 978-3-540-40460-6) in the search results, but neither Google Book's Preview search, nor Amazon's Look Inside! search, find results for "Kaffee" – or, for that matter, "coffee". So I suspect the Number Theory hit is like we often see for Google hits: the search term does not occur in the result itself, but on many pages linking to the result.  --Lambiam 14:33, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I also agree with removing the statement about the original language of this quote, unless a reliable source is found. On the other hand, many sources mention that this sentence was originally given by Alfréd Rényi, and Paul Erdős only quoted him [4][5], so that claim should stay. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 03:24, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I would say add the source Number Theory Springer 1995 and leave it in Alfréd Rényi for the time being. It is after all a completely banal sentence unless it was said in German, which is the only way it would be a pun and memorable. A history of mathematics Jeff Suzuki - 2002 has "the first main result was by the Hungarian mathematician Alfred Renyi (March 20. 1921-February 1, 1970), who is best known for a saying of his: a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems ", that should be in the Alfréd Rényi article. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:42, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

That reference is fine. Erdős often quoted this statement, so it has a role in this article, as well. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 04:38, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Erdős attributes it to Rényi, with slightly different wording, on p.15 of this 1995 paper; no German there. Dicklyon (talk) 04:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

"Paul Erdős (occasionally spelled Erdos or Erdös;.."

Question: Why do we need "(occasionally spelled Erdos or Erdös;" in the lede? Every single East European name gets stripped of accents or given the wrong accents in English sources occasionally, we don't have this "occasionally [mis]spelled.." caveat in other ledes. Why is it here in this one? In ictu oculi (talk) 15:28, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

It is probably superfluous to point out that diacritics are sometimes omitted by certain mainstream sources, since this is true of every single name that incorporates diacritics. However occurrences of substitution of one diacritic with another are more unusual, and therefore might be noted in passing. Maybe the wording could be "occasionally written". — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

But even then "Paul Erdős (occasionally written with the wrong short accent Erdös) isn't achieving anything. Britannica doesn't begin its lead Paul Erdös (occasionally written with the correct long accent Erdős) why should en.wikipedia be doing this? fr. de. hu. etc. wp don't do this. Why is it necessary to enshrine the typo errors of some English-language texts in the lede? As it stands it is misleading, it makes it look as if typos and lack of fonts are actual alternative names. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:15, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree it would be worth mentioning later in the article. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:18, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I have no objection to moving it out of the first sentence. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 03:19, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Given the vast number of sources that use multiple incorrect spellings, and his notability and huge number of published papers, I think it is worth noting in the article that his name is sometimes (incorrectly) spelled with the two dots, just in case people were wondering. However, this does not belong in the first line - it belongs somewhere later on in the article. --KarlB (talk) 23:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Well we at least have no problem sourcing that it is "by mistake or out of typographical necessity." Where would the appropriate place in the article be to move the comment and source with, for instance, this:

Combinatorics, Paul Erdős is eighty Paul Erdős, D. Miklós, Vera T. Sós - 1996 "The word "erdos" means "wooded" and is not an uncommon name in Hungary. It is pronounced approximately like "air-dish" where the "i" in "dish" sounds like that in "first." Note the pair of long accents on the "ő," often (even in Erdos's own papers) by mistake or out of typographical necessity replaced by "ö," the more familiar German umlaut which also exists in Hungarian.

I suggest the birth/parentage/childhood section would be the place? After "He was the only surviving child of Anna and Lajos Erdős (formerly Engländer)" Schechter (1988) records that his father's name-change was to reduce anti-semitism, and maybe that's worth mentioning too? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:20, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Good idea, nice quotation. Currently, there is only a "Biography" section in the article. We might want to partition this into several subsection. Nevertheless, the best place for addressing the "ő"/"ö"/"o" problem would be this section (and not the lead). KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:25, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I went ahead and moved it, though I thought it fit better under "Mathematical work", since that's where it most commonly shows up. Feel free to move it, or modify the wording, as you see fit... LouScheffer (talk) 12:14, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks fine... maybe that's the model to follow with Ngô Bảo Châu too, except recently found that New Scientist, matematicalia.net and austms.org.au all render Ngô Bảo Châu's name as his Chicago homepage, i.e. correctly. Do mathematics journals favour Hungarians over Vietnamese :) or is there a database issue which affects Hungarian surnames less than those of Vietnamese mathematicians? In ictu oculi (talk) 11:46, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Memphis?

The box said his last affiliation was Memphis, but the link given does not state it, and I found no reference to that online. Delete? Uffish (talk) 16:46, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed it because, as you say, the link does not support it. It may be true, though, because [6] mentions "the department's long relationship with Paul Erdös". InverseHypercube (talk) 02:42, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Waterloo Broken links

The citations of about Erdos giving up his Waterloo degree have broken links

69.165.175.225 (talk) 19:03, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Dubious claim

The article claims that "at the age of three, he could calculate how many seconds a person had lived". I find this very hard to believe; is there a precedent for a similar feat?

Thanks. InverseHypercube (talk) 07:12, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I checked the book. It says he was four years old, and could calculate the number of seconds given an age. This is not as difficult as calculating the number of seconds given the date of birth, which is what I assumed. InverseHypercube (talk) 18:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I could be wrong but......

If I'm not mistaken, Paul Erdős may have had some form of autistic spectrum disorder. I think I read about that in a book somewhere. Does anybody else have any evidence supporting this "fact"? The Uncyclopedian (talk) 20:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not in Schecter's biography. Any such statement would be pure speculation, anyhow. --JBL (talk) 22:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Good point, it would only be assumed anyway, since nobody knew anything about the disorder until Erdős was 30. The Uncyclopedian (talk) 15:54, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Place of birth

There is a mini-dispute about whether Erdős' place of birth should be given as "Austria-Hungary" or "Hungary", or by my expanded version "Budapest, Hungary, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire". Joel B. Lewis thinks that this is a "digression[] ... to satisfy random IP nationalists". However, it isn't about nationalism, it's about precision and informativeness.

In 1913, Hungary shared a joint monarchy with the Austrians, but it had a lot of autonomy including its own parliament, its own premier, and its own capital. Everyone knew it as "Hungary" and most mentions of "Austria-Hungary" of the time were in regard to foreign affairs and military matters, which functions Hungary conducted jointly with Austria. You can check the terminology of the time by looking in contemporary newspapers. Here is a sample of 1913 newspaper articles that refer to Budapest as being in Hungary: [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14].

This shows that "Hungary" was a widely accepted and understood place name of the time. Given that it is more understood and more specific (smaller) than "Austria-Hungary", what is the case for not using it? Does it help readers more to learn that someone was born in India, or in the British Empire? (And India at the time had far less autonomy than Hungary did.)

Let me add that the above is not just my personal opinion but as understood in law at the time. Let me quote from the article Nagy, "Hungarian Law", Law Magazine and Review: A Quarterly Review of Jurisprudence, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (November 1908), pp. 1-17.

The fact namely, that Hungary and Austria are ruled over by one and the same Monarch, and that the "personal union" involves a certain community of government−(e.g., in military affairs and questions of foreign politics) in consequence of which community, Hungary does not as a rule appear in international relations independently, but in union with Austria, as "Austria-Hungary," or the "Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,"−has given rise to the erroneous conception that Hungary is not an independent sovereignty, and does not possess absolute legislative and executive power of her own. ... In dealing with this fallacy ... I may refer, in the first place, to the fact that there is no such thing as Austro-Hungarian citizenship... Austro-Hungarian citizens, as one often hears citizens of either State described abroad, do not exist there are either Austrian subjects or Hungarian subjects. ... I may refer further, to the fact that Austria and Hungary have no common Legislature each of the two States has its own independent Parliament, and each of the latter is possessed of an entirely distinct organisation. Laws in force in Hungary can only be passed by the Hungarian Legislature (consisting of the Upper and Lower Houses), with the sanction of the Monarch as the duly crowned king of Hungary ... Even for the above-mentioned "common" affairs (i.e., military affairs and foreign politics) there is no "common" Parliament, − the bills relating thereto are passed separatim, by the Hungarian Parliament for Hungary, and by the Austrian "Reichsrat" for Austria. ... The ratification of international treaties is also carried out, not by the delegations, but separately by the Hungarian and Austrian Parliaments. ... There are no common Austro-Hungarian Courts of law, but separate Hungarian and separate Austrian ones ... (and so on).

In short, there isn't a legal reason for using "Austria-Hungary" as the place of birth either. Note in particular that Erdős was by birth a Hungarian citizen, not an Austrian-Hungarian citizen since the latter didn't exist. McKay (talk) 02:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

To clarify my comment: I do not object to either Austria-Hungary or Hungary, both of which are surely correct. I do object to a historical digression about the relationship between Hungary and Austria-Hungary in the lead section of an article about Paul Erdős. I also think that it is good policy in general to prevent edits changing these sorts of things, since such changes tend to be driven by incompatible and senseless nationalist views. I am happy with the current form of the sentence in question. --JBL (talk) 17:42, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Erdös vs Erdős. Which is it?

I believe the name is Erdös NOT Erdős. If so it is misspelled thoughout the article. Also, the URL for this article does not work, perhaps because the 'wrong character is being used. The "2 dot" character is used on the Erdos Number Project website and in every book I've seen about him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.66.65.201 (talk) 00:40, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Erdős is correct. McKay (talk) 02:02, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Erdos Jewish orgin in first sentence?

Erdos' Jewish family and origin should not be in the lead paragraph, in my opinion. The lead should tell only the most important facts, as concisely as possible. His Jewish origin has nothing to do with what Erdos is known for - prolific author, collaborative mathematics, or eccentric life style. So it should be in his life story, but not in the lead paragraph. LouScheffer (talk) 00:54, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Before a random IP deleted it today, that had been part of the lead for a long time. I see no reason to remove it based on one person's whims. Icarus of old (talk) 23:22, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Erdos number contradiction

Section 4 claims that 'approximately 200,000 mathematicians have an assigned Erdős number' and, a few sentences later, that 'only 134,007 mathematicians have an Erdős number'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dermatoglyphics (talk • contribs) 20:52, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I've done the (rather unhelpful) task of tagging a bunch of sentences whose sourcing is unclear. Presumably, the problem is just that the two numbers are from different years, but it is not clear. --JBL (talk) 21:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

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Erdős number section

Reading this section, especially the sentences:

"For example, the 134,007 mathematicians with a known Erdős number have a median value of 5.[citation needed] In contrast, the median Erdős number of Fields Medalists is 3.[citation needed] Approximately 7,100 mathematicians have an Erdős number of 2 or less.[50][when?] Collaboration distances will necessarily increase over long time scales, as mathematicians with low Erdős numbers die and become unavailable for collaboration. "

I'm concerned about the cognitive values of the section. How 134,007 mathematicians can be contrasted to Fields Medalists? What kind of contrast it is about? The calculated median of Fields Medalists will go up "over long time scales".

I'd like to propose deletion of this text for not having any cognitive value.--93.86.33.191 (talk) 07:20, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

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Asexual?

https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=3P2pVq9XlGsC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=erdos+paul+asexual&source=bl&ots=O_BI044eIY&sig=Gofz-xhEtNyYxN3HnoGkuiWOSO8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwg7zOwKzYAhUJhbwKHWg7AK8Q6AEIQjAE#v=onepage&q=erdos%20paul%20asexual&f=false

Paul Erdos is listed asexual here...--EPN-001GF IZEN བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། 12:30, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Pal Erdős - a more critical view needed

Nonsense from a sock-puppet of a blocked user.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Two notes below belong to J. Larson: 1. In May 1954, Kurepa published his Math Review MR0058687 (15,410b) of P. Erdős and R. Rado. A problem on ordered sets. J. London Math. Soc. (2), 28(4):426–438, 1953., in which the first half delineated the contents of the paper, and the second half listed references he felt should have been included, citing five of his own papers and Theorem 14 of [Hausdorff, 1908]. Of relevance to the partition calculus, he wrote “especially the proof and the result in the reviewer’s paper [his Fundamental Relation proved in [1939]] · · · are connected with lemmas 3 and 4 of the paper under review.” Kurepa asserted further that “the idea of using superposition of orderings of a same set was, as far as we know, first introduced in 1937 by the reviewer.” 2. For the Ramification Problem, the authors note that a solution for n = ℵ0 was given by Dénes König [1927]. Erdős and Tarski continued: “for numbers n > ℵ0 which are not inaccessible it was given by Aronszajn” (sic). It is surprising that the authors do not mention Kurepa, who brought the word ramification into mathematics for this type of system. Tarski presumably was acquainted with Kurepa’s work after Kurepa’s visit to Warsaw in 1937 (see [Kurepa, 1937a]), but Erdős was not. In his prior [1942], Erdős had already used the approach he came to call the ramification method without using this name. (All above is mainly copy-pasted from Gabbay, Dov M.; Kanamori, Akihiro; Woods, John; Sets and extensions in the twentieth century, 2012 edition) 3. From In memoriam: James Earl Baumgartner (1943 - 2011) we learn that the paper Paul Erdos and Richard Rado. A partition calculus in set theory. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 62:427–489, 1956 contains a large part proved by Kurepa in his paper Đuro Kurepa. Ensembles ordonnées et ramifiés. Publ. Math. Univ. Belgrade, 4:1–138, 1935. A35. 21 years earlier. But Kurepa wasn't mentioned in this Erdos-Rado work. The only new thing in the Erdor-Rado paper was a conjecture refuted by Specker. 4. P Erdos et all; Choosability in Graphs: In Graph Coloring Problems by Tommy R. Jensen, Bjarne Toft John Wiley & Sons, 2011 (p. 19) we read, The idea of associating with each vertex v of G a list L(v) from which the colors has to be chosen in coloring of G is due independently to Vizing [1976] and to Erdős, Rubin, and Taylor [1979]. Further in [15] we read Borodin [Bor] (1977) and Erdős-Rubin-Taylor [ERT] independently characterized the degree-listcolorable graphs. But there is no due credits given to Soviet mathematicians in the Erdős-Rubin-Taylor paper.--BTZorbas (talk) 15:39, 22 January 2018 (UTC) It is extremely common in the sciences to have previous ideas that are close to those in a current paper. It's also very common for a reviewer, who is of course in the same area, to believe their prior papers should be cited as well, and the new work is just an slight extension of their own research. Unless this rises to the level of scientific misconduct (the author knew of the prior research, deliberately did not cite it, and claimed the idea as their own) this does not seem very notable. Priority disputes are quite common, and probably everyone who has published many papers has run into this situation at least once. LouScheffer (talk) 19:16, 10 February 2018 (UTC) Note In the article it was said, "Ten years later, in 1973, the 60-year-old Erdős voluntarily left Hungary". But in his [ERT] paper from 1979 he wrote that he was affiliated with Hungarian Institute of Sciences.--BTZorbas (talk) 15:57, 22 January 2018 (UTC) Does this have anything to do with the article? It is hard to know what to make of your comments. For example, do you not know that it is possible to be affiliated with an institution without necessarily being located in the same place? (It is quite common for academics to hold institutional affiliations that cross borders, or even oceans.) --JBL (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC) "it is possible" != "it was". Don't make of my comments anything, please.--BTZorbas (talk) 18:06, 22 January 2018 (UTC) This talk page is for discussion about editing the article. If your comments don't have anything to do with editing the article, please don't use this space for them in the future. --JBL (talk) 18:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC) My comment has to do with this article very much. My advice above is just for people like you.--BTZorbas (talk) 19:10, 22 January 2018 (UTC) "People like me" meaning good-faith editors who are interested in the subject of this article? Or merely people who like other editors to be explicit about what they are proposing? Or perhaps people with competence in this field? --JBL (talk) 21:02, 22 January 2018 (UTC) Is there a proposal for a change to the article? Johnuniq (talk) 00:07, 23 January 2018 (UTC) Yes there is one. The three examples I counted above show that Erdos and coauthors reintroduced (or "reintroduced"?) some solutions and some ideas without giving due credit to those who pioneered the same ideas and solutions.--BTZorbas (talk) 01:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC) You say "yes there is one" but you haven't made it yet. --JBL (talk) 01:20, 23 January 2018 (UTC)