Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath Number

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The following quantities are relatively well-known:

• Erdős Number: Steps to Paul Erdős through co-authored publications.
• Bacon Number: Steps to Kevin Bacon through acting in the same film.

The sum of these two quantities is the Erdős-Bacon Number. Another quantity is slightly less well-known:

• Sabbath Number: Steps to Black Sabbath through being in the same musical performance.

These three are combined to form the Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath Number. Jonathan Love has an Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath Number of 11, as can be confirmed by the following data:

Erdős Number	Bacon Number	Sabbath Number
Paul Erdős (0)	Kevin Bacon (0)	Tony Iommi (0)
wrote On 2-designs with	acted in A Few Good Men with	performed in Smoke on the Water (Rock Aid Armenia) with
Richard M. Wilson (1)	Kiefer Sutherland (1)	David Gilmour (1)
wrote Embeddings of ultrametric spaces in finite-dimensional structures with	acted in To End All Wars with	performed in The Show Must Go On (Pink Floyd) with
Eric B. Baum (2)	Yugo Saso (2)	Bruce Johnston (2)
wrote Running dynamic programming algorithms on a DNA computer with	acted in Jitensha with	performed in Spirit Voices (The King's Singers) with
Dan Boneh (3)	Jonathan Love (3)	Gabriel Crouch (3)
wrote Supersingular Curves With Small Non-integer Endomorphisms with		performed in Princeton Glee Club Presents: Ensemble Basiani with
Jonathan Love (4)		Jonathan Love (4)

Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath Number References

• A blog post by Sean O'Connor, the alleged coiner of the EBS number (contains links to further background; unfortunately many of these links appear to be broken).
• A number of blog posts that highlight the EBS number, including from Times Higher Education, MIT, Arizona State University, and University of Surrey.
• An archived copy of erdosbaconsabbath.com, a database of individuals with known finite EBS number. The site has since expired, but the creator, Ross Churchley, has a post discussing the project, and the site content is available as a Github Repository.
• The Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath Wiki, an active but less comprehensive database.

Content last updated March 2020. Return to homepage