The Erdős number describes the “collaborative distance” between mathematician Paul Erdős and another mathematician, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. It basically links any actor to any other according to the common movies they have made together. I found a few websites: The Oracle of Bacon That night, I searched for a website or app where I could test the “six degrees of separation” theory. It will take you approximately 50 years to look at the 1.6 billion profiles in the forth round. Let’s say you use Instagram so fast that it takes only one second to look at each profile. Oops! You’ve already surpassed the Instagram population! If we continue like this, the number of accounts you need to look at in the forth round will be 1.6 billion. Otherwise, you need to look at the accounts of those 40,000 people, as well as all of the accounts they follow one by one.Īgain, assuming that each profile follows an average of 200 people, the number of accounts you need to look at in the third round will be 40,000 * 200 = 8 million people. If there is someone in your followers among those 40,000 people, bingo again! You can reach Will Smith through two people! Let’s say that each profile you look at follows an average of 200 accounts again, so the number of accounts you need to look at in the second round will be 200 * 200 = 40,000 people. Otherwise, what you need to do this time is look at the accounts of those 200 people and look at all the accounts they follow one by one. If there is someone in your followers among those 200 people, bingo! You can reach Will Smith through that person. To do this, of course, you need to look at the accounts Will Smith follows.
![six degrees of separation watch online six degrees of separation watch online](https://exploringyourmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/six-degrees-of-separation.jpg)
Let’s say you want to meet him and you want to find out who you can reach him through. Now, if you like, let’s put this story into mathematical terms.Īs I’m a big fan of Will Smith, let’s continue with him. This data is backed by research done by Facebook and other big social media platforms. Today, with the advent of social media, this number has been reduced from an average of six people to 2.9 to 4.2 people in the chain. Later, this theory was popularized by the 1993 film Six Degrees of Separation, starring Will Smith and Stockard Channing.
![six degrees of separation watch online six degrees of separation watch online](https://dist.neo4j.com/wp-content/uploads/20210825065951/1hCnxe2Vqyibxk4yti4tK6A.jpeg)
This theory was put to the test by Stanley Milgram in his small-world experiment in 1967, where the goal was to send a letter from Kansas to Boston with the chain of “a friend of a friend.” As expected, the letter reached its destination after five people. This means that if we follow a chain of “a friend of a friend,” we can reach anyone in a maximum of six steps.
![six degrees of separation watch online six degrees of separation watch online](https://img.24reel.com/cdn/big/cast/5bf699a2-aaa7-47a9-87ce-64f738ae5c89.jpg)
Going back to the issue I mentioned above about reaching everyone through a maximum of six people - have you ever heard of the “ Six Degrees of Separation” theory?Īccording to the theory of six degrees of separation, everybody on the planet is on average six or fewer social connections away from each other. Well, if I told you that you can reach everyone in the world through a maximum of six people by following the path of your friend’s friend, would you better understand how the virus spreads so quickly?Įverything is connected to each other, including the universe itself.
![six degrees of separation watch online six degrees of separation watch online](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/o0vin-Q_Xv8/maxresdefault.jpg)
So how is it that the planet we live on can succumb to a virus that spread from only one person in such a short amount of time? Three months ago, I was talking with my friend about the COVID-19 virus.ĬOVID-19 has taken the whole world under its influence in a very short time.