Suppose you want to connect to Barack Obama through LinkedIn; how many degrees of connection do you have to go through to reach Obama? A first-degree connection is someone who is connected to you on LinkedIn. A second-degree connection is someone who is connected to your first-degree connection and so on. Assuming that each of your connections and their connections respectively are interested and ready to help you network with the Obama, research says that it only takes an average of 5 degrees of connection for you to connect with Obama, or anyone in the world, for that matter. In other words, the shortest path between any of us and Obama is less than or equal to five. That sounds strange, right? This is known as the small-world phenomenon. And, fortunately, the shortest path between This author and Obama is only three.
This means that...
