快猫短视频

WHAT does the king of Gothic horror, Christopher Lee, have in common with
Britain鈥檚 Astronomer Royal? They鈥檙e both fantastically well connected, according
to a new mathematical study. Its author says that applying similar techniques to
our own social contacts could make successful networking much easier.

According to popular folklore, any person in the world can be connected to
any other by a few acquaintances, typically around six. A similar 鈥渟mall-world鈥�
effect is enshrined in the Kevin Bacon game: link any film actor to Bacon
through their co-stars in as few steps as possible. Most actors link to him in
three steps or fewer.

Intrigued by such social networks, Mark Newman of the Santa Fe Institute in
New Mexico decided to study how well scientists are connected. He extracted the
names of authors on scientific articles within a particular discipline, such as
the astrophysics papers put in the Los Alamos e-print archive between 1995 and
1999.

Newman worked out the 鈥渄istance鈥� between every possible pair of authors. A
pair who worked together had a distance of 1, for instance, while two people who
had not collaborated but had a collaborator in common had a distance of 2. The
lower a person鈥檚 average separation from others, the better connected they must
be.

But some collaborations involve hundreds of scientists who don鈥檛 know each
other. When Newman weighted the measures of distance to reflect this, he found
that the accolade of best-connected astrophysicist went to the Astronomer Royal,
Martin Rees of Cambridge University.

Rees is modest about this honour. 鈥淚鈥檓 certainly relieved not to be the `most
disconnected astrophysicist鈥�,鈥� he says.

Newman thinks his work could have practical benefits, such as improving
software that puts people in touch. 鈥淲orking out the shortest path between
people could be useful,鈥� says Newman. 鈥淚f you want to get in contact with some
other person, you could find out if you have a friend in common, then ask for an
颈苍迟谤辞诲耻肠迟颈辞苍.鈥�

He adds that he got a surprise when he applied his algorithm to actors: 鈥淭he
best-connected person in the movie-acting world is actually not Kevin Bacon at
all鈥攊t鈥檚 Christopher Lee.鈥�