Mathematics
Mathematicians use an analogous notion of collaboration distance: two persons are linked if they are coauthors of an article. The collaboration distance with mathematician Paul Erdős is called the Erdős number. Erdős-Bacon numbers are a further extension of the same thinking. Watts and Strogatz showed that the average path length between two nodes in a random network is equal to log N / log K, where N = total nodes and K = acquaintances per node. Thus if N = 300,000,000 (90% of the US population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 19.5 / 3.4 = 5.7 and if N = 6,000,000,000 (90% of the World population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 22.5 / 3.4 = 6.6. (Assume 10% of population is too young to participate.)
Read more about this topic: Six Degrees Of Separation
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The clock doth strike, by algebra.”
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—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)