Filed under: Internet, Social Software
Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Ever wonder how many clicks it takes to get from the Wikipedia page for Bill Gates to the page for Mark Shuttleworth? The answer is three. How about from "ice cream" to "cone?" Surprisingly, the answer is four. We know this not because we've been wasting hours clicking on every possible Wikipedia link and tabulating the results, but because somebody's done all the hard work for us by creating a Six Degrees of Wikipedia page.
Just type in any two items, and the web service will dig through a database of Wikipedia articles and figure out how long it would take to get from one to the other. The Wikipedia page for "2007" is apparently the closest to the "center" of Wikipedia, meaning that you can get to any other page from 2007 with an average of 3.45 clicks. When you take out Wikipedia pages for dates or long lists of items, the page for "United Kingdom," is the closest to the center, since it's an average of 3.67 clicks away from any other page.
[via Digital Inspiration]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Todd said 5:24PM on 6-04-2008
Oh hush Download Squad, voices carry.
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Riley said 11:39PM on 6-04-2008
I don't think this thing is right...trying to get the most number of clicks, I tried this:
http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi-bin/shortpath.cgi?from=penis&to=microsoft
There's no "arithmetic mean" in that article...
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Rico San said 9:26AM on 6-05-2008
It's like Six Clicks to Jesus. My friend told me about that game. Click on Random Article on the Wikipedia front page, and get to the article about Jesus in less than 6 clicks.
This is what we do at a Catholic school :-P
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bob said 11:35AM on 6-05-2008
we play a similar game in my public school
except we try to get to the article about sex
arvash said 12:09PM on 6-05-2008
http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi-bin/shortpath.cgi?from=vger&to=gentoo
I broke it. . .
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archpope said 7:35AM on 6-06-2008
xeriscape to Cydonia: no path found.
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