St. Lawrence University

            Festival of Science 2002

Aleksandra Portnova


Click on this small photo to view larger one.		 Kevin Bacon and the St. Lawrence Senior Class: Six Degrees of Separation?

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Patti Frazer Lock

Oral presentation
    My research focuses on social networks and the underlying graph structure.  I look at the empirical work done in the area of clustering coefficients, path lengths, and centrality in the networks.  One of the well-popularized studies in the area of social networks is the Kevin Bacon Problem.  If we say that two actors are linked if they have appeared in a movie together, then every actor is connected to Kevin Bacon through a chain of at most six links.  This is known as a small world phenomenon and popularized as "six degrees of separation".  I am investigating the degree of separation of the St. Lawrence senior class.  After conducting a survey and collecting data on the structure of the senior class social network, I will be able to identify the connectivity and path lengths of the graph representing the social network of the senior class.  This talk will discuss the theoretical techniques for analysis of social networks as well as the results of the data analysis and the practical meaning of the degrees of separation of the St. Lawrence University Class of 2002.

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