The small world problem

The pleasing notion that we live in a “small world” where people are connected by “six degrees of separation” may be the academic equivalent of an urban myth. New evidence discovered in the Milgram papers in the Yale archives, together with a review of the research on the small world problem, reveals that this widely accepted idea rests on scanty empirical evidence. The “small world problem” takes its name from an experience familiar to us all. As Stanley Milgram described it: