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  3. It’s one of the world’s most celebrated theories - that it takes just six st

It’s one of the world’s most celebrated theories - that it takes just six st

游客2023-11-17  22
问题     It’s one of the world’s most celebrated theories - that it takes just six steps to link any two people on the planet. Person A would have danced at a ball with B, who once shared a flat with C who bought a bicycle from D... and so on. Now a few computer whizzes have put the theory to the test and found that it is true - almost. Rather than six degrees of separation, we are linked by 6.6. In other words, we really are just a handful of acquaintances away from the likes of Madonna and the Queen. Eric Horvitz, one of the Microsoft researchers who tested the theory using electronic messages, said he was shocked at the result.
    The concept of six degrees of separation came to public attention after an experiment in the Sixties, but is seen today as more of an urban legend. However, the Microsoft study shows that neither the growing population - nor advances in communication technology - have markedly changed the result. "What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity," he said. "People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore."
    The researchers studied the addresses of 30 billion instant messages sent through the Microsoft network in a single month in 2006. Two people were considered to be acquaintances - or separated by one degree - if they communicated with one another through the email-like system. Calculations showed the majority of users, or 78 per cent, could be connected by just 6.6 messages or steps.
    The phrase "six degrees of separation" came into usage after the 1960s study by academic Stanley Milgram. Milgram sent letters to a random selection of people in American cities, telling them that they were to pass the note to a certain stockbroker living in Boston if they knew him by name. If they did not, they were to pass the letter to someone they knew who they thought might have a better chance of being acquainted with him. The average number of times the letters had to be passed on to reach the broker was six, or 6.2 to be exact - and a new phrase was born.
    The concept was not a new one even then, and had been written about in the 1920s by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. Karinthy said that any two individuals could be connected by at most five acquaintances.
    But after Milgram’s experiment the idea captured the world’s imagination, later spawning a play and film. In the 1993 film Six Degrees of Separation, based on the 1990 play of the same name, one of the characters said: "Six degrees of separation between us and everybody else on the planet." "The president of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names." "I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people." However, others claim we are not as well connected as we think, and that a few quality friendships are more important that a host of loose links. Barriers such as education, class and race mean the world is not as small as we might like to believe, it is argued. [br] In Paragraph 6 why the president of the United States and a gondolier in Venice are mentioned together?
选项 A、They are mentioned together as an example to illustrate the theory of six degrees of separation.
B、They are mentioned together because they know each other.
C、Because the gondolier is a supporter of the president of the U.S.
D、Because the president of the U.S. is going to visit Venice.
答案 A
解析 细节题。美国总统和刚朵拉船夫是定位关键词，同时也需要对全文主旨有所把握，才能分清此处只不过是为了说明六度分隔理论而举的例子。
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