Why do your collaborators have more collaborators than you?

Paul Erdős is undisputedly the most prolific mathematician to ever have lived. He published over 1500 papers while he was alive, and worked with over 500 collaborators. It is perhaps the number of collaborators which stands out even more so than the number of papers published. 

Though it may seem paradoxical, most people have fewer collaborators than their own collaborators do on average. This is known as the “friendship” paradox and is normally framed as your friends having, on average, more friends than you. But why is that the case?

For more on this subject, check out this week’s article at the HLFF Blog by Sophie Maclean: The Collaboration Paradox

Image caption: Paul Erdős, 1992. Image credits: Wikipedia / Kmhkmh (CC BY 3.0)

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