The article noted people everyone on the internet is on average 4.74 hops from someone else. [1]

If they say "Two or three", that makes me believe that they have no constraints on it, and merely query as many hops' worth of data as is enough to give what they feel to be Enough. "Two or three" implies, IMO, "... to five".

1: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/technology/between-you-and...

The article specifically addresses this question:

> For a sense of scale, researchers at the University of Milan found in 2011 that everyone on the Internet was, on average, 4.74 steps away from anyone else.

If you have a nearly universal database, you can probably get pretty close to covering the entire population of the country with 3 hops.

marshray downthread brings up a great point (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6059864)

Even if you assume a low chance of everyone getting hit in 3 hops from one Kevin Bacon, there of course isn't just one Kevin Bacon. That "terrorist watch list" is pretty damn long.

I'd think you have a good shot at two, almost guaranteed no more than 3.

I'm from Norway, and yet can easily make that kind of connection in 4 hops: I've spoken to a few Norwegian MP's, who obviously have spoken to quite a few Norwegian prime ministers.

There's probably a number of other connections from her as she would have met any number of internationally renowned people both in capacity as prime minister and as WHO director - including US politicians - that might have met Kevin Bacon, but courtesy of the Oracle of Bacon she also has a Bacon number of 2 based on appearing in a talkshow as a guest alongside Michael Bolton documentary with Michael Bolton, who has appeared in some awards show with Kevin Bacon.

Chances are good there's some less obvious route that'd get me there in 3 hops. Once you "allow" off screen meetings, it gets really easy.

It would surprise me, for example, if Kevin Bacon hasn't met some relatively prominent US politicians and/or celebrities that has met one of the Norwegian MP's I've spoken to (for two hops), or if he hasn't met one of the US politicians or artists that have been at the Nobel peace price concerts, where they'd have met either aforementioned Gro Harlem Brundtland or any number of other Norwegian politicians that would either include someone I've met or definitively have met someone I've met (for 3 hops).

I think people tend to overestimate how many steps it'll take, because they see these celebrities and politicians they can't relate to that they think are so far apart from "their" world, but of course that is silly because these people tend to meet a lot of people, and so are natural "shortcuts" to get low number of hops to anyone. For example:

I'm two hops from Mao and Castro (via a trade-union rep I met that was introduced to Mao on a group trip to China in the 60's, and a former left wing politician I've met that met Castro on a visit to Cuba), and as a result at most 3 hops from Stalin and Nixon and most other major leaders contemporaneous with either of them, ranging from "ordinary politicians" to a fascinating laundry list of horrible dictators.

It really is a small world.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a parlor game based on the "six degrees of separation" concept, which posits that any two people on Earth are six or less acquaintance links apart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon

I don't see why they would limit it to phone calls. It would make more sense to use ANY connection: coworkers, phone call, text, email, Facebook friend, relatives, members of organization/school/church, physical location, etc. Any of these could be a "hop".

>> With 4 or more hops it surely becomes pretty trivial.

Just a heads up, your example only had 3 hops.

You (Hop 1) Senator (Hop 2) Movie Exec (Hop 3) Kevin Bacon