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I was wondering the following. Suppose we have two mathematicians, up for consideration for a tenure-track position. Which would you hire?

Mathematician A has written several papers, but only 1 or 2 are single-authored, and the rest are written jointly with other mathematicians.

Mathematician B has written less papers than A, but most of his papers were written by himself.

Assuming that their papers were of similar quality, what does the mathematical community prefer?

Perhaps this has already been asked, but I can't seem to search for it.

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 If a department expects lots of high quality papers, why would it care whether the author collaborates or not? At the end of the day the number is the same. – Alex R. Sep 16 2011 at 4:55
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 There is quite a large variation with regards to numbers of collaborators among sub-disciplines.This article by J. Grossman may be useful ams.org/notices/200501/fea-grossman.pdf Almost surely, the quality of the answer you seek will depend on the specifics of the department and sub-discipline you're thinking of. – Nilima Nigam Sep 16 2011 at 5:01
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 I tend to like career questions on MO (and answer them, as the record show), but I don't think this one is suitable. – Thierry Zell Sep 16 2011 at 5:06
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 Is one of the mathematicians named Erdos? – Gerry Myerson Sep 16 2011 at 5:18
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 The catch is of course, there is no way of answering this without actually seeing the papers. Closing. – algori Sep 16 2011 at 6:06

closed as subjective and argumentative by Will Jagy, Mark Sapir, Qiaochu Yuan, David Roberts, algori Sep 16 2011 at 6:02

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