Small World Project at Columbia University

In 1967, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an important experiment to test the hypothesis that members of any large social network would be inevitably connected to each other through short chains of intermediate acquaintances. His results, now a part of popular culture and common parlance, was that the average lengths of the resulting acquaintance chains was approximately six. This “six degrees of separation” hypothesis is now being tested in the Small World Project by Professor Duncan J. Watts and his colleagues at Columbia University. Professor Watts and his team hope “to test not only average properties of lengths of acquaintance chains, but also the distribution of lengths, along with the effect of race, class, nationality, occupation, and education.” Source: The Scout Report