{"id":12666,"date":"2012-09-20T05:30:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T09:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geneveith.com\/?p=12666"},"modified":"2012-09-20T05:30:48","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T09:30:48","slug":"degrees-of-separation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/","title":{"rendered":"Degrees of separation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Forget Google Earth, Google Street View, and those proposed Google goggles.\u00a0 Here is Google\u2019s coolest feature:\u00a0 Google will now calculate how many degrees of separation a person is from Kevin Bacon.<\/p>\n

It is the party game beloved of cinephiles everywhere, one which rewards detailed knowledge of the career of one of the finest actors never to receive an Oscar nomination. And now it is even easier to play: Google has built Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon into its search system.<\/p>\n

Devised in January 1994 by a trio of students at Pennsylvania\u2019s Albright college, the original game was based on the idea that it is always possible to connect every movie actor in the world back to the Footloose star in no more than six associations. A website, board game and book later emerged and an initially reluctant Bacon eventually embraced the phenomenon by launching his own site, SixDegrees.org, to foster charitable donations.<\/p>\n

\nTo use Google\u2019s system, the user simply types in the words \u201cBacon number\u201d followed by the name of the actor. By way of example, typing \u201cBacon number Simon Pegg\u201d reveals that Bacon and the British actor are linked by Tom Cruise, because the latter appeared in 1992\u2019s A Few Good Men with Bacon and in 2006\u2019s Mission: Impossible III with Pegg. Pegg therefore has a Bacon number of two, indicating two degrees of separation.\n

Lead engineer Yossi Matias said the project was about showcasing the power of Google\u2019s search engine by flagging up the deep-rooted connections between people in the film industry. \u201cIf you think about search in the traditional sense, for years it has been to try and match, find pages and sources where you would find the text,\u201d he told the Hollywood Reporter. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting that this small-world phenomena when applied to the world of actors actually shows that in most cases, most actors aren\u2019t that far apart from each other. And most of them have a relatively small Bacon number.\u201d<\/p>\n

By way of example, type French Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard\u2019s name into the system and it is revealed that she has a Bacon number of two, while Humphrey Bogart, who died in 1957, nevertheless has a Bacon number of just three.<\/p>\n

via Google builds Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon into its search system | Film | guardian.co.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Google algorithm (someone please explain how it works)\u00a0 just works for Hollywood figures, which is the original game, though one variation tries to connect anyone on earth to Mr. Bacon.\u00a0 I, for example, have a Bacon number of four:\u00a0 (1) The wife of a former colleague is the daughter of the man who did the make-up on Citizen Kane<\/em>.\u00a0 (2)\u00a0 He worked for Orson Welles, who produced, directed, and acted in Citizen Kane<\/em>.\u00a0 (3)\u00a0 Google tells me that Orson Welles appeared with Jack Nicholson in A Safe Place.<\/em>\u00a0 (4)\u00a0 And that Jack Nicholson and Kevin Bacon appeared in A Few Good Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Another variation proposes that there are no more than six degrees of separation (or maybe a few more) between any two people in the world.\u00a0 For example, what chain of people who have met or have had a direct personal contact with each other might connect me to, say, a hypothetical Chinese peasant named Chen who lives in the Jiangxi province?\u00a0 (1) When I was in high school, I shook the hand of Senator Eugene McCarthy.\u00a0 (2)\u00a0 He shook the hand of Richard Nixon.\u00a0 (3)\u00a0 Nixon shook the hand of Mao Zedong.\u00a0 (4)\u00a0 Chairman Mao knew the members of his Communist Politburo.\u00a0 (5)\u00a0 The representative of the Jiangxi province worked with the Secret Police.\u00a0 (6) One of whose members doubtless spied on Chen and his parents.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if that always works, of course.\u00a0 I suppose it\u2019s based on the exponential calculations that perhaps someone could explain for us.\u00a0 (Is it that if each person has met a thousand people, six degrees would mean 1000 to the 6th power, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, a number that would require a great deal of overlap since the world\u2019s population is only about 7,000,000,000.)<\/p>\n

I think it shouldn\u2019t count if your only contact with a person is reading a book or article that was written by that person.\u00a0 But if you comment on the person\u2019s blog, that does count, like talking to someone over the phone.\u00a0 So you can add onto my degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon.<\/p>\n

Do any of you have any other interesting degrees of separation that the rest of us could then appropriate?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forget Google Earth, Google Street View, and those proposed Google goggles.\u00a0 Here is Google\u2019s coolest feature:\u00a0 Google will now calculate how many degrees of separation a person is from Kevin Bacon. It is the party game beloved of cinephiles everywhere, one which rewards detailed knowledge of the career of one of the finest actors never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1230,1401],"class_list":["post-12666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-kevin-bacon","tag-mathematics"],"yoast_head":"\nDegrees of separation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Forget Google Earth, Google Street View, and those proposed Google goggles.\u00a0 Here is Google's coolest feature:\u00a0 Google will now calculate how many degrees\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Degrees of separation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Forget Google Earth, Google Street View, and those proposed Google goggles.\u00a0 Here is Google's coolest feature:\u00a0 Google will now calculate how many degrees\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-20T09:30:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ABms5xQ6ttU\/TdlJ-th85uI\/AAAAAAAAHrk\/7rBKtiNTs7o\/s1600\/kevin_bacon_goofy_haircut_six_degrees.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/\",\"name\":\"Degrees of separation\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-20T09:30:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-09-20T09:30:48+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"Forget Google Earth, Google Street View, and those proposed Google goggles.\u00a0 Here is Google's coolest feature:\u00a0 Google will now calculate how many degrees\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/09\/degrees-of-separation\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Degrees of separation\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. 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