That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally elivered to its target recipient. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out ot all their friends, to know the target personally. The senders knew the recipient’s name, occupation, and general location. ” He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts.
Although they were able to phrase the question (given a set N of people, what is the probability that each member of N is connected to another member via k_l, k_2, links?, after tuuenty years they were still unable to solue the problem to their own satistacriom In 1967, Ameren ociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way ro test the theory, which he called “the small-world problem. Six degrees of separation Eshuu Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six Steps away from any other person on FarTh, six degrees of separation Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances hat has no more than five The theory was first proposed in I gag by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinrhy in a short story called “Chains,- In the 1950’s, lthiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kothen (18M) set out to prove the theory mathematically.