I was catching up on some reading when I came across the article ‘Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon’. I remember this phenomenon, one of the first peculiarities of the Internet, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon:

The trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is based on the concept of the small world phenomenon and rests on the assumption that any actor can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon. The game requires a group of players to try to connect any film actor in history to Kevin Bacon as quickly as possible and in as few links as possible. The game was especially popular on college campuses in the early 1990s.^{[citation needed]} In 2007, Bacon started a charitable organization named SixDegrees.org.

The Bacon number of an actor or actress 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 movie industry. The higher the Bacon number, the farther away from Kevin Bacon the actor is.

The computation of a Bacon number for actor X is a "shortest path" algorithm:

• If the lowest Bacon number of any actor with whom X has appeared in a movie is N, X’s Bacon number is N + 1.
• Kevin Bacon himself has a Bacon number of 0.

Here is an example, using Elvis Presley:

• Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit (1969) with Edward Asner
• Edward 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 himself) has a Bacon number of 2.

As of December 2007, the highest finite Bacon number reported by the Oracle of Bacon is 8. [3]. The American Civil War general William Rufus Shafter is frequently cited as having a Bacon number of 10, but his number is in fact only 7. [4].

[edit] Notable Bacon numbers

• Ronald Reagan (Bacon number: 2)
  • Ronald Reagan was in The Young Doctors (1961) with Eddie Albert.
  • Eddie Albert was in The Big Picture (1989) with Kevin Bacon.
• Pope John Paul II (Bacon number: 3)
  • Pope John Paul II was in Padre Pio — Tra cielo e terra (2000) with Giovanni Lombardo Radice.
  • Giovanni Lombardo Radice was in The Omen (2006) with Vee Vimolmal
  • Vee Vimolmal was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon
• Paul Erdős, who is the centre of a similar network for mathematicians, may have had a Bacon number of 4 in 2007,^[2] due to his appearance as himself in the 1993 film N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős. This link is disputed because the Gene Patterson in N is a Number may not be the same Gene Patterson who was in Box of Moonlight^[3]
  • Paul Erdős was in N is a Number with Gene Patterson.
  • Gene Patterson was in Box of Moon Light (1996) with Catherine Keener.
  • Catherine Keener was in Friends with Money (2006) with Marin Hinkle.
  • Marin Hinkle was in Rails & Ties (2007) with Kevin Bacon.
• Once Frost/Nixon has been released, currently scheduled for late 2008, Paul Erdős will have a Bacon number of 3.^[4]
  • Paul Erdős was in N is a Number with Gene Patterson.
  • Gene Patterson was in Box of Moon Light (1996) with Sam Rockwell.
  • Sam Rockwell will be in Frost/Nixon (2008) with Kevin Bacon

You have to love the way the Internet connects people with crazy ideas.