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On April 20, 2004 Bill Tozier, a researcher with Erdős number 4, offered the chance for collaboration to attain an Erdős number 5 in an auction on eBay. The final bid was $1,031, though apparently the winning bidder had no intention to pay. The winner (who already had an Erdős number of 3) considered it a "mockery", and said "papers have to be worked and earned, not sold, auctioned or bought".

Another eBay auction offered an Erdős number of 2 for a prospective paper to be submitted for publication to "Chance" (a magazine of the American Statistical Association) about skill in the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour. It closed on 22 July 2004 with a winning bid of $127.40. This is noteworthy because with the exception of a few co-authored articles to be published posthumously, 2 is the lowest number that can now be achieved.

Ich frag mich ja, wie sich so eine Disziplin wie die Mathematik so lange halten konnte...

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