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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
This is a game, whose title is a [[Mondegreen]] of ''Six Degrees of Separation'', in which it is said that any actor can be linked through his or her film roles to actor [[Kevin Bacon]] within six steps. For example, [[George Clooney]] was in ''[[Ocean's Eleven]]'' with [[Matt Damon]], Matt Damon was in ''[[The Departed]]'' with [[Jack Nicholson]], and Jack Nicholson was in ''[[A Few Good Men]]'' with Kevin Bacon. It should be noted that this spreads across all actors; ''[[Megumi Hayashibara]]'' can be linked to Kevin in only two moves.<ref>She was in ''[[Vampire Hunter D]]: Bloodlust'', which included Micheal McShane in the dub. He was in ''[[Balto]]'' with Kevin Bacon. (Arguably, the dubbing process introduces a degree of separation, bringing Megumi Hayashibara's Bacon Number to 3.)</ref> It's often a game for film nerds to test the abilities of each other.
There is a whole website dedicated to this found [http://oracleofbacon.org/index.php here.]
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Mathematicians have extrapolated this phenomenon and given it a name: "[[Bacon Number]]", which sounds like one of those impossibly high numbers with dangerous implications for the [[Divide by Zero|future of the universe]] but is in fact incredibly low. Researchers have demonstrated (''true story!'') that almost everyone has a Bacon Number < 10, due to Kevin Bacon appearing in, mathematically speaking, [[Hey, It's That Guy!|almost every film]] on the planet. For instance, [[Kevin Bacon]] himself has a Bacon Number of 0. Chew on ''that'', [[Mr. T]]!
Curiously, the most connected person in acting is not [[Kevin Bacon]]. Research by people who found it important enough to do so discovered that the centre of the Hollywood universe shifts over time, and
Mathematicians (and all scientists) also have a similar ranking called the Erdos Number, based on co-authorship of mathematical articles with deceased mathematician Paul Erdos. Inevitably there's a combination, the Erdos-Bacon number, based on adding the two together. Thanks to the documentaries, and occasional extra work on math-related films, some mathematicians have EB numbers as low as 3. More surprising are actors who attack the problem from the other side. Danica McKellar (Winnie from [[The Wonder Years]] and bona-fide mathematician) and [[Natalie Portman]] (wrote a psychology paper at Harvard with an Erdos link) each have Erdos-Bacon numbers of 6. (This ties them with [[Richard Feynman]].)
For applications in fiction, see [[One Degree of Separation]].
To find an actor's Bacon Number, consult [http://oracleofbacon.org/ The Oracle of Bacon].
No relation to [[Bacon Addiction]].
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:More Like a Footnote Than Anything Else]]
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