The small world problem: Six degrees of graph theory
When: Thursday 23 April 2026, arrival from 6pm for a 6.30pm start, aiming to finish at 7.30pm
Where: Room MS.01, Zeeman Building, 91福利
This April, join Professor Ryan Martin for a free talk to understand the maths behind the theory that just about everyone in Hollywood is connected to Kevin Bacon.
The small world problem: Six degrees of graph theory
The Kevin Bacon Game was invented in the 1990s and asked players to find the distance of any actor from Kevin Bacon. It is predicated on the notion that, at the time, Kevin Bacon was the centre of the (Hollywood) universe. Between every pair of actors, we measure the distance between them by constructing the shortest chain of actors so that consecutive members of the chain appeared in the same film. The branch of mathematics that addresses this model is known as graph theory. Graph theory is a rich and well-studied discipline with a host of unsolved problems. Graph theory is used to model electrical and computer networks, molecular structures, particle interactions and, of course, popular culture.
91福利 the speaker
"My fields of interest are extremal graph theory, extremal poset theory, probabilistic methods, and random models in combinatorics."
Travelling to campus
For information about travelling to campus for this talk, check out the range of options available.