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{iamson]], a The most highly connected nodes of the Internet have been referred to as "the Kevin Bacons of the Web", inasmuch as they enable most users to navigate to most sites in 19 clicks or less.

Bacon numbers

The Bacon number of an actor is the number of degrees of separation he or she has from Bacon, as defined by the game. This is an application of the Erdős number concept to the Hollywood movie industry. The higher the Bacon number, the greater the separation from Kevin Bacon the actor is.

The computation of a Bacon number for actor X is a "shortest path" algorithm, applied to the co-stardom network:

• Kevin Bacon himself has a Bacon number of 0.
• Those actors who have worked directly with Kevin Bacon have a Bacon number of 1.
• If the lowest Bacon number of any actor with whom X has appeared in any movie is N, X's Bacon number is N+1.

Examples

Elvis Presley:

• Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit (1969) with Ed Asner
• Ed Asner was in JFK (1991) with Kevin Bacon

Therefore, Asner has a Bacon number of 1, and Presley (who never appeared in a film with Bacon) has a Bacon number of 2.

Ian McKellen:

• Ian McKellen was in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) with Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy
• McAvoy and Fassbender were in X-Men: First Class (2011) with Kevin Bacon

Therefore, McAvoy and Fassbender have Bacon numbers of 1, and McKellen has a Bacon number of 2.

Because some people have both a finite Bacon and a finite Erdős number because of acting and publications, there are a rare few who have a finite Erdős–Bacon number, which is defined as the sum of a person's independent Erdős and Bacon numbers.

Photography book

Inspired by the game, the British photographer Andy Gotts tried to reach Kevin Bacon through photographic links instead of film links.

Gotts wrote to 300 actors asking to take their pictures, and received permission only from Joss Ackland. Ackland then suggested that Gotts photograph Greta Scacchi, with whom he had appeared in the film White Mischief. Gotts proceeded from there, asking each actor to refer him to one or more friends or colleagues. Eventually, Christian Slater referred him to Bacon. Gotts' photograph of Bacon completed the project, eight years after it began. Gotts published the photos in a book, Degrees (ISBN 0-9546843-6-2), with text by Alan Bates, Pierce Brosnan, and Bacon.

See also

• Small-world experiment
• Morphy Number, connections via chess games to Paul Morphy
• Shusaku number, equivalent in the Go world with Honinbo Shusaku

References

1. Stromberg, Joseph (February 18, 2013). "Any Two Pages on the Web Are Connected By 19 Clicks or Less". Smithsonian. Retrieved March 22, 2013.
2. Albert-László Barabási (February 18, 2013). "Discussion: Network science". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 371 (1987): 20120375. doi:10.1098/rsta.2012.0375. PMID 23419844.
3. "Andy Gotts' Degrees Exhibition". Clooney Studio. Archived from the original on October 13, 2007.

External links

• The Oracle of Bacon computes the Bacon number of any actor or actress from Misplaced Pages data
• Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg by Malcolm Gladwell

• Endless Games games
• Games of mental skill
• Separation numbers