Upside-Down Swimming Pool

Fans of Randall Munroe (xkcd, what if?) might be amused by my recent Quora answer about an upside-down swimming pool. (I had no idea at first why Quora/FB selected an outer space image for this, but on reflection it seems perversely appropriate.)

Go Erdős number

I gained a new Erdős number tonight. My math Erdős number is 5 (through David A. Patterson 4), my movie Erdős number is 4 (me – Little Fauss & Big Halsy (1970) – Robert Redford – Legal Eagles (1986) – Marshall Bell – Director’s Cut (2016) – Ronald Graham – N is a Number (1993) – Paul Erdős), and now my Go Erdős number is 3 (me – Nathan Tice (nee Gardner) – Nicholas Krier – Paul Erdős). Erdős is also known to have played Go with Albert Einstein, so my Go Einstein number would be 4. Still trying to figure out if there’s a credible chain to Alan Turing, who played Go at Princeton, Cambridge, and Bletchley Park.

UPDATE: My Go Erdős number might actually be 2, since I played Go with professor Ralph Fox at Princeton in the 1973-74 academic year. It’s likely that Fox played Erdős, but I don’t know for certain.