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Is it me or xkcd comics become more and more obscure*? Paul Erdos would give out monetary prizes to whoever would provide solutions to unsolved mathematical problems. Are those students in the comic trying to claim such prizes? Anyone with a better explanation?
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Footnotes:
- * I really like it though -it gives me a chance to learn or refresh my knowledge on some interesting, albeit very geeky subjects [↩]
1. Carolyn
Isn’t this a reference to the Erdős number? I assumed they were quickly co-authoring a paper to get a low Erdős number and that’s why they needed Erdős to sign the paper as well. See the Wikipedia article on Erdős Number.
2. Stavros
Ah! Great! Much better than what I came up with!
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