Young Adult Degrees of Separation
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No, this isn't like making a PhD and an MA go to their rooms because they’ve been fighting all evening. You're thinking of a Separation of Degrees.
| Language | English Language |
| Literary Topics | Special Interest |
Transcript
Officer Pepperoni Residue may be closer to you than you realize...
A theory known as Six Degrees of Separation was first proposed in 1929...
...in a play by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. <<free-yesh kah-rin-thee>>
It introduced the idea that you can pick any two people, anywhere in the world...
...and connect them in no more than six steps.
So, that weirdo in the freezer section...
...he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows...
...you. Sends shivers up your spine, doesn't it?
And not just because you're standing too close to the ice cream.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram tried testing the theory in the 1960s...
...by asking people to address a letter to a particular person...
...then mailing that letter to all their personal friends and asking them to forward to everyone
they knew...
...until it got to its intended target.
And spam was born.
However, Milgram got some pretty interesting results.
It never took more than 5 hops for the letters to get to their intended addressee.
Some argue that he didn't set up his experiment ideally though...
...so most consider the experiment inconclusive. The concept was further fleshed out in a second
play...
...written in 1990, and actually titled Six Degrees of Separation.
It was adapted to a film by the same name.
Will Smith starred in it. Back when he was just a wee little thing.
But the Six Degrees phenomenon was just picking up steam.
Three students at Albright College created a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...
...who is this actor guy. He's been in a few films. Or 76.
The software they engineered allowed you to plug in any actor's name...
...as long as they had at least one credit on imdb...
...and they could connect that actor to Kevin Bacon in 6 steps or fewer.
You could even connect any actor to any other actor... Mr. Bacon did not even necessarily
need to be involved.
Although he does tend to get a little pouty when you leave him out of things.
In 2011, researchers at the University of Milan crunched some numbers...
...and found that, on average, Facebook users worldwide were separated by only 4.74 degrees.
And when they zeroed in on a single country, users were only 3 degrees apart.
So the next time you logon to Facebook and the site recommends some users you may be
friends with...
...don't be surprised to see this guy.