A few years ago, William Tozier attempted to auction his Erdős number on EBay. An Erdős Number is like the six degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon number using published papers instead of movies and using Paul Erdős instead of Kevin Bacon. The attempt to auction his Erdős Number off apparently created a lot of interest and controversy in academia. Wikipedia currently reports that the winning bid was around $1000. I distinctly recall some angry mathematician submitting an outlandishly high bid of around a million dollars or more, but saying that he had no intention of paying. Hopefully the angry mathematician's EBay account was canceled since I consider the auction process to be just as worthy of seriousness as the academic distinction of an Erdős Number.
William Tozier is now giving a detailed explanation how William Tozier auctioned his Erdős Number and the consequences in a post entitled One measures a Circle. I look forward to his follow up posts.
