![]() In 2003, Columbia University conducted an analogous experiment on social connectedness amongst Internet email users. The story investigated - in abstract, conceptual, and fictional terms - many of the problems that would captivate future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory. These conjectures were expanded in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, who published a volume of short stories titled Everything is Different. One of these pieces was titled "Chains", or "Chain-Links". Theories on the optimal design of cities, city traffic flows, neighborhoods, and demographics were in vogue after World War I. The idea is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population. It was popularized in John Guare's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation. ![]() ![]() ![]() The concept was originally set out in a 1929 short story by Frigyes Karinthy, where a group of people plays a game trying to connect any person in the world to themselves by a chain of five others. It is also known as the six handshakes rule. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. Six Degrees of Separation is the idea that all people on average are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other.
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