The small-world phenomenon

Abstract

Long a matter of folklore, the "small-world phenomenon" --the principle that we are all linked by short chains of acquaintances --was inaugurated as an area of experimental study in the social sciences through the pioneering work of Stanley Milgram in the 1960's. This work was among the first to make the phenomenon quantitative, allowing people to speak of the "six degrees of separation" between any two people in the United States. Since then, a number of network models have been proposed as frameworks in which to study the problem analytically. One of the most refined of these models was formulated in recent work of Watts and Strogatz; their framework provided compelling evidence that the smallworld phenomenon is p@rvasive in a range of networks arising in nature and technology, and a fundamental ingredient in the evolution of the World Wide Web.