The six degrees

Posted by Niall in archive on 20-Mar-2006 at 1:31 pm GMT.

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The six degrees of separation theory popped into my head today while I was in the shower and I got to wondering about it, trying to think of someone obscure that I maybe couldn’t link myself to in six steps. My first attempt… Mother Teresa.

But I realised, of course, that whether I go to mass or not (I don’t, actually… sorry, Jesus.), our local parish priest (linked to me purely by being our local parish priest) PROBABLY knows someone who knows someone who met Pope John Paul II once and of course the late pope met Mother Teresa so that’s her out. It’s not that much of a long shot…

So let’s try again eh? William Shatner! Or David Hasselhoff! Ah, but I’ve met a few “celebrities” in my time… Mick Lally (from Glenroe) for example. And, er, Ronan Keating (who was a nice friendly chap… at the time). One of them is bound to be linked to the Shat’ or the ‘Hoff by 5 steps or less. Alright then… President George W. Bush? Surely I can’t trace a link from myself to him…

‘Fraid so… I’ve had a pint in a certain bar in Dublin served to me by a man who served a Guinness to Bill Clinton, who has, of course, met Bush (and yes, I mean George) on many an occasion. Failing that I’ve met a number of politicians in my time. There’d be a link there.

Okay, I guess I’ve got to think more obscure and less famous… but how will I pick a subject, if it’s someone I’ve never heard of?

The wiki page about it all makes for interesting reading (on a relatively boring day) – particularly the perfectly plausible "proof" that it offers:

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 in the American Midwest to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts, several thousand miles away. The senders knew the recipient’s name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package 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 the package was personally delivered to its target recipient.

Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram’s findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase six degrees of separation.

Clever!

Kevin Bacon, on a chair, yesterdayThen there’s the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (presumably he was chosen as his name is an easy replacement, length and sound-wise to ’separation’), – and the Oracle of Bacon which links any actor to Kevin Bacon within 6 moves.

Nice to know that the theory can be disproven in the case of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon though… just take Irish born actor Francis Bacon who, despite being Kevin’s "surnamesake", has a bacon number of infinity.

ANYWAY…

Music-wise, this week, I’ve been reminiscing as I’ve been encoding my CD collection to MP3. I’m only up to about 24GB so far. Been listening to such lumaries as The Devlins, Daft Punk, C&C Music Factory (remember them???), Tenacious D and Babylon Zoo. Might just roll out a bit of nostalgia on the radio show this week. We’ll see…

I’m off to eat some… bacon.

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