Small-world experiment

Experiments examining the average path length for social networks Milgram concluded from his small-world experiments that any two random people in the United States would be linked by a chain of (on average) six steps. The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a small-world-type network characterized by short path-lengths. The experiments are often associated with the phrase "six degrees of separation", although Milgram did not use this term himself. Historical context of the small-world problem Guglielmo Marconi's conjectures based on his radio work in the early 20th century, which were articulated in his 1909 Nobel Prize address,[failed verification] may have inspired Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy to write a challenge to find another person to whom he could not be connected through at most five people. This is perhaps the earliest reference to the concept of six degrees of separation, and the search for an answer to the small world problem. Mathematicia