Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries.

The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called Chains. The concept is based on the idea that the number of acquaintances grows exponentially with the number of links in the chain, and so only a small number of links is required for the set of acquaintances to become the whole human population. + Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. By extension, the same term is often used to describe any other setting in which some form of link exists between individual entities in a large set. For example, "see also" links in a dictionary entry may point the reader to other entries in the same dictionary; after following only six such links, the reader could potentially get to any word in the dictionary that has a link to it. In this special case of a dictionary, it is sometimes called the six links rule.

History

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In the 1950s, Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) set out to prove the theory mathematically. Although they were able to phrase the question (given a set $N$ of people, what is the probability that each member of $N$ is connected to another member via $k\_1$, $k\_2$, $k\_3$...$k\_n$ links?), after twenty years they were still unable to solve the problem to their own satisfaction. In 1967, American social psychologist Stanley Milgram (see Small world phenomenon) devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem". He randomly selected people from various places in the United States to send postcards to one of two targets: one in Massachusetts and one in the American Midwest. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the card to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until it was delivered to the target himself/herself. Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, 80% of the successfully delivered packages were delivered after four or fewer steps. Almost all the chains were less than six steps. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today, and his findings inspired the phrase six degrees of separation. Playwright John Guare popularized the phrase when he chose it as the title for his 1990 play. Milgram's findings were criticized, however, because they were based on the number of packages that reached the intended recipient, which was less than five percent of the total packages sent out. Further, many claim that Milgram biased the experiment in favor of the successful delivery of the packages by selecting his participants from a list of people likely to have above-average incomes, and thus not representative of the average person. It has been theorised that six is less representative of the true distance between people than of the maximum length a chain can be sustained without breaking down.

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@tahdiddy GREAT episode...but his first TRULY great acting performance came BEFORE this actually...rent "Six Degrees of Separation"..AMAZING
Daniellewithers (Danielle Withers) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:42:26 -0000
@tahdiddy GREAT episode...but his first TRULY great acting performance came BEFORE this actually...rent "Six Degrees of Separation"..AMAZING
Six Degrees of Separation (Vintage): John Guare http://bookmooch.com/0679734813 #iskandor #US #liter
bookmooch (BookMooch) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:01:40 -0000
Six Degrees of Separation (Vintage): John Guare http://bookmooch.com/0679734813 #iskandor #US #liter
What am I going to do until Friday? Think about the six degrees of separation?
TheonlyAfeefah (Afeefah Ahmad) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:51:56 -0000
What am I going to do until Friday? Think about the six degrees of separation?
Ya I met the girl its crazy six degrees of separation
mikeguzman1 ( Mike Guzman) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:58:39 -0000
Ya I met the girl its crazy six degrees of separation
갑자기 Six Degrees of Separation 가 생각나네요,, 여섯단계의 분리. 과연 fllow하지 않은 트윗 친구들을 몇단계를 거치면 연결될수있을까요?
bongdal (kyu bong, Shim) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:25:02 -0000
갑자기 Six Degrees of Separation 가 생각나네요,, 여섯단계의 분리. 과연 fllow하지 않은 트윗 친구들을 몇단계를 거치면 연결될수있을까요?
#thankstotwitter SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION is an UNDERSTATEMENT
bxtch_imightbe (SoSo LayLay) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:56:13 -0000
#thankstotwitter SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION is an UNDERSTATEMENT

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