We've less than six degrees of separation from Arnold, Gray?

Oakland Tribune, Aug 19, 2003 by Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER

The "six degrees of separation" are down to just four or five in California's recall election, a sign that the Golden State's politics are a small world after all.

The average Californian probably has only four or five "degrees of separation" from one of the 135 candidates seeking the governor's office, according to Mark Newman, assistant professor of statistical physics at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

That's based partly on the famous work of social psychologist Stanley Milgram, whose 1967 study brought about the familiar concept of "six degrees of separation," the idea that any two random people in the United States are connected by a chain of only about six acquaintances.

Newman said if you use those six degrees as a benchmark and consider that California has about 35 million residents, the appropriate logarithmic calculation finds there would be about 5.3 degrees of separation between any two random people in California. "Of course, the distance to, say, Cruz Bustamante may be less than this because he knows a lot of people," Newman wrote in an e-mail.

But "given that there are 135 people running for governor, you can take about one degree of separation off of that figure if you only want to find a chain to any of the candidates," he wrote.

A 1989 study concluded the average number of acquaintances a person has is 290, so factor that in and you end up with "about 4.5 steps from a random person to someone who is running for governor," Newman wrote.

"Bottom line: If everyone you know knows someone who is running for governor, then you have a lot of well-connected friends! Two steps is pretty good. The average person would expect four."

Kevin Bacon, by the way, is not a candidate.

Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com .