Lafer number

The degree of separation is a way of representing how connected Quiz Bowl players are, similar to Bacon numbers in film or Erdos numbers in publishing. To qualify as a degree of separation, two players need to play on the same team together (whether middle school, high school, college, or open) in a Quiz Bowl tournament, particularly if statistics from that tournament can be found in the HDWhite Database.

How to calculate

Currently, there is no specialized graph database that can be used to easily calculate degrees of separation. Instead, degrees must be found manually through looking at the databases on HDWhite, NAQT, and College Quiz Bowl Stats. The list of players with a Lafer number of one (seen below) can be used as a centerpiece for calculations.

Lafer Number

One method of measuring centrality in Quiz Bowl is the Lafer number, calculating how many degrees of separation a player is from Matt Lafer (a longtime Quiz Bowl player who has played in many open tournaments). The following is an example of how a Lafer number is calculated:

#	Name/Played With
0	Matt Lafer
	Played Cambridge Open UIUC 2018 With
1	Halle Friedman
	Played NASAT @ Columbia 2024 With
2	Noah Chen
	Played ACF Regionals 2025 With
3	Olin Bose

Lafer numbers can potentially be used as a centerpiece to connect a pair of different players. Matt Lafer is the only player with a Lafer Number of 0, and anyone who is disconnected from him entirely in databases (such as Ken Jennings, who has statistics for only one tournament and his teammates did not play any others), has a Lafer number of infinity. Other suggested centers include Mike Bentley and Matt Bollinger, both of whom have a Lafer number of one. The following list is of all players who have a Lafer number of one, as of May 27, 2025.

Lafer number

How to calculate

Lafer Number

Players with a Lafer Number of 1

Other Lafer Numbers

2

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