Six Degrees Of Separation: Getting Connected - Douglas E. Castle
Six Degrees Of Separation: Getting Connected By Douglas E. Castle For The Braintenance Blog There is a theoretical maximum of only six persons (connections, similar to links in a chain) between you and anyone whom you'd like to meet in the entire world. Some quick background information follows: Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." In the 1950's, 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 o...