Paul Erdos, currently most prolific mathematician in history, is always
making jokes about how old he is. (He says, for example, that he is two and
a half billion years old, because in his youth the age of the Earth was
known to be two billion years and now it is known to be 4.5 billion years.)
He observed one day that the audiences at his talks had been getting larger
and larger, to the point where they filled halls so big that his old and
feeble voice could not be heard. Erdos speculated as to the cause of this.
"I think," he said, "it must be that everyone wants to be able to say 'I
remember Erdos; why, I even attended his last lecture!'"
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