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How it made it is likely simple graph theory on the web of connections leading out from you. I don't know if you've played with the oracle of Bacon, but you can plug in two random actors, and see how many degrees of separation there are. I've had a hard time getting that above 3, even picking a long dead actor and one new in the industry. That said, the entertainment world is pretty small, but we're a lot more tightly connected than most people think.

Now as to why it showed that connection is a different matter. Maybe they had some sort of algorithm that figured out a slightly higher probability of connection, maybe it was just pure chance.

PageRank is designed around the 'random surfer' model (15% chance to jump to a random webpage) and returns the probability that a surfer will arrive back at the same page after a large number of links. A node that only has two edges can easily have the highest PageRank.

If all they want is to find highly-connected nodes, then the Oracle of Bacon-style average length solution would work just as well.

According to the Oracle of Bacon, Hitler has a Bacon number of 4, so you must be correct.

If you would to dig deeper, look here:

http://oracleofbacon.org/how.php

Though, my guess is they didn't implement their own heap and just used the a language provided one (not to say learning how to make one isn't worth while).

I haven't seen anybody link to this site yet. To see who is the center of the hollywood universe:
http://oracleofbacon.org/center_list.php

Brian May has an Erdös Number of 7, a Bacon number of no more than 3, and a Sabbath number of 1, thus putting him squarely at the centre of the universe.

http://rosschurchley.com/2009/10/18/brian-mays-erdos-bacon-number/
http://www.timeblimp.com/?q=erdos.html

Two.

According to that site, Forest Whitaker is a better Bacon than Kevin, so the late Mr. Davis is probably quite well linked to most actors.

That's FRANCIS Bacon, you insensitive clod!

How's this:

William Shakespeare wrote Romeo + Juliet which starred Leonardo DeCaprio who starred in Gangs of New York with Tim Pigott-Smith who was in Sweet William with Melvyn Bragg who was the narrator in Francis Bacon.

W

(thanks to the Oracle.)

Who the heck is Kevin Bacon?

An actor. See The Oracle of Bacon, which draws connections (through movies they've been in) between Kevin Bacon and any other actor you can think of.

A person's "Bacon Number" indicates how many steps away from Kevin Bacon they are, for example someone who has been in a movie with Kevin Bacon has a Bacon Number of 1, while someone who has been in a movie with someone else who's been in a movie with Kevin Bacon has a Bacon Number of 2. It's not easy to think of an actor whose Bacon Number is higher than three.

The oracle of Bacon at UVA is what, ten years old? And not a single mention in this discussion?

http://oracleofbacon.org/

Kevin Bacon was in "Frasier" (1993) {Adventures in Paradise: Part 2 (#2.9)} with Kelsey Grammer
Kelsey Grammer was in "Frasier" (1993) {The Two Hundredth (#9.8)} with Bill Gates (I)
Bill Gates (I) was in "Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet" (1998) (mini) with Steve Jobs

http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks?firstname=Steve+Jobs&secondname=Kevin+Bacon&using=3&game=0

I always thought it should be the Vogelstein-Steiger number anyway as Bert Vogelstein is the most cited scientist and Rod Steiger is the most highly connected actor in hollywood.

Oh sure, brag, but in Bacon numbers, you're a... oh, wow, 3, not bad!

It's not as famous as this number.

Angel Boris actually has a Bacon Number of 2:

1. Angel Boris was in Suicide Blonde (1999) with Robert Deacon
2. Robert Deacon was in Wild Things (1998) with Kevin Bacon

(Source: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia)

Which makes three steps from you to Kevin Bacon. HTH, HAND!

Dlugar

>>...how many degrees is he from Kevin Bacon?
Infinity.

I found it really amusing that he was on IMDB to begin with, but apparently he can't be connected to Kevin Bacon. C'est la vie.

You know what else happens on 5 January 2006? This guy turns 75. Maybe the Sober writer also hates The Godfather! Who knows?

And that guy is only 3 steps from Hitler.
It's all so clear now.

The article you link to is dated. Erdos himself now has a Bacon Number of 4 as of 2003 : http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks ?firstname=Bacon%2C+Kevin&game=1&secondname=Erdos% 2C+Paul&using=1 in summary, The Oracle says: Paul Erdos has a Bacon number of 4. Paul Erdos was in N Is a Number (1993) with Gene Patterson Gene Patterson was in Box of Moon Light (1996) with Annie Corley Annie Corley was in 21 Grams (2003) with Sean Penn Sean Penn was in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon

If you check out http://oracleofbacon.org/ you'll see that: Kevin Bacon->Eli Wallach->Omar Sharif.

Omar Sharif went to school with the brothers of- get ready for it: Osama bin Laden. Kevin Bacon, if you're out there: the Stealth bombers are on their way. Your days of making mediocre movies are over. Freedom is winning!

-A proud member of the Reality Based Community-

Apparently, there is only one person needed to make the link between Kevin Bacon and Miguel de Icaza. Surely Miguel is linked to a bunch of people here (I know people who know him, as I'm sure others do). Ergo, Kevin Bacon must use Linux.

--The Oracle

Also, for some more recent studies ...

check out this

And if you'd like to see Six Degress of Kevin Bacon in action ... see the
oracle of bacon

Kevin Bacon!

Thanks Oracle of Bacon!

On a (semi-)related note, I'm still waiting for the 6-Degrees-Of-Also-Bought. You know, people who bought A also bought B; people who bought B also bought C; people who bought C bought the Soundtrack to Flashdance with Kevin Bacon.

Could this be added as an extension to the Oracle of Bacon?

Anybody else to remember SixDegrees? You stated your links (and they could be specified as "friend," "co-worker," "acquaintance"...) and you were connected with them when they acknowledged you. Extremely interesting sociologically. But it went down for (apparently) economical reasons.
And for those who are genuinely interested in Internet applications of network analysis, you might want to try the Oracle of Bacon. It's an online version of the "Kevin Bacon Game" (who starred with whom) using data from IMDB.

Waldo has a Bacon index of 3 But it does depend on which "Waldo" you use. There is another who has an infinite Bacon index. (Hah! He is both at 3 and Infinity. Waldo is clearly some sort of quantum character)

Infinite gritz and Natalie Portman!

-

And Rob Malda has a Natalie Portman number of 3 as well.

For that matter, Natalie Portman has a Bacon Number of 2. Hrms.

Don't forget, CmdrTaco is only three degrees from Bacon!

The Oracle says: osama bin laden has a Bacon number of 3.

Osama bin Laden was in Naqoyqatsi (2002) with Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney was in Mayor of the Sunset Strip (2003) with Courtney Love
Courtney Love was in Trapped (2002) with Kevin Bacon

Matt Cutts is not found by the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, but it suggests "Dale Cutts" who might be related. And Dale Cutts was in Cyborg Cop II with Ken Gampy, who was in Air Up There with... Kevin Bacon.

That means that the NSA is only 4 degrees away from Kevin Bacon!

Scary...

--Joe

The Oracle says: Saddam Hussein has a Bacon number of 3.

Saddam Hussein was in Saddam Hussein: Defying the World - A Visual Biography (1990) with George Bush
George Bush was in Last Party, The (1993) with Sean Penn
Sean Penn was in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon

Did you hear that Kevin Bacon has been linked to al Qaeda?

Great sig. Just out of curiosity I consulted The Oracle of Bacon. Unfortunately it shows that Osama Bin Laden has a Bacon rating of infinity. This is actually not very uncommon. About 12 percent of people shown on film cannot be linked to Kevin Bacon through film work (it's actually much harder to find someone with a bacon rating of 4 or more). Osama is one of these. Oddly enough, he has an entry in imdb.com He was in 2 films, "Afganistan: Land in Crisis (2002)" and "Osama Bin Laden: Behind the Madness (2002)" During the filming of one of these he apparently lost some toes.

the internet is weird.

And Eric S. Raymond a Traci Lords number of 3! Or is it the other way around?
Check it out

Yes, they do. And so does this "The GNU/Stallmans" character they've got listed in the cast...

So does Malda. By comparison, Bill Gates has a Bacon number of infinity!

The Oracle of Bacon says that Linus Torvalds has a bacon number of 3. Not bad.

Though for whatever reason "Rob Malda" is not listed in the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia's database, other folks who appear in Revolution OS are listed. Since Bruce Perens has a Bacon Number of 3, for his appearance in Revolution OS, CmdrTaco's Bacon Number is also 3.

Now, the question is, does he have an Erdös number?

That's me.

Building a graph is quite straightforward

If you've taken a algorithms course (and passed) you, too, could probably write an Oracle of Bacon.

I believe that this was done on a single computer. Pretty sure it wasn't a cluster of 4,000 ;)

The Oracle takes up about 10% of the CPU time on a single Sun Ultra 5/300. (I didn't pick the machine. The Oracle also runs on my Linux 2xP2/350 at home.) It takes around 80 MB of memory -- 25 for the actors and movies and the rest for a cache of recent queries. Each query consumes 0.6 seconds of CPU time, or 0.02 seconds if it comes from the cache. 90-95% of queries get served from the cache, so the Oracle should withstand 10+ queries per second, sustained.

The task is trivially parallelizable across big clusters (UVA has a 256-node cluster that would do the trick), but the need for that has never arisen... :)

--Patrick

That's me.

Building a graph is quite straightforward

If you've taken a algorithms course (and passed) you, too, could probably write an Oracle of Bacon.

I believe that this was done on a single computer. Pretty sure it wasn't a cluster of 4,000 ;)

The Oracle takes up about 10% of the CPU time on a single Sun Ultra 5/300. (I didn't pick the machine. The Oracle also runs on my Linux 2xP2/350 at home.) It takes around 80 MB of memory -- 25 for the actors and movies and the rest for a cache of recent queries. Each query consumes 0.6 seconds of CPU time, or 0.02 seconds if it comes from the cache. 90-95% of queries get served from the cache, so the Oracle should withstand 10+ queries per second, sustained.

The task is trivially parallelizable across big clusters (UVA has a 256-node cluster that would do the trick), but the need for that has never arisen... :)

--Patrick

That's me.

Building a graph is quite straightforward

If you've taken a algorithms course (and passed) you, too, could probably write an Oracle of Bacon.

I believe that this was done on a single computer. Pretty sure it wasn't a cluster of 4,000 ;)

The Oracle takes up about 10% of the CPU time on a single Sun Ultra 5/300. (I didn't pick the machine. The Oracle also runs on my Linux 2xP2/350 at home.) It takes around 80 MB of memory -- 25 for the actors and movies and the rest for a cache of recent queries. Each query consumes 0.6 seconds of CPU time, or 0.02 seconds if it comes from the cache. 90-95% of queries get served from the cache, so the Oracle should withstand 10+ queries per second, sustained.

The task is trivially parallelizable across big clusters (UVA has a 256-node cluster that would do the trick), but the need for that has never arisen... :)

--Patrick

That's me.

Building a graph is quite straightforward

If you've taken a algorithms course (and passed) you, too, could probably write an Oracle of Bacon.

I believe that this was done on a single computer. Pretty sure it wasn't a cluster of 4,000 ;)

The Oracle takes up about 10% of the CPU time on a single Sun Ultra 5/300. (I didn't pick the machine. The Oracle also runs on my Linux 2xP2/350 at home.) It takes around 80 MB of memory -- 25 for the actors and movies and the rest for a cache of recent queries. Each query consumes 0.6 seconds of CPU time, or 0.02 seconds if it comes from the cache. 90-95% of queries get served from the cache, so the Oracle should withstand 10+ queries per second, sustained.

The task is trivially parallelizable across big clusters (UVA has a 256-node cluster that would do the trick), but the need for that has never arisen... :)

--Patrick