Editing Small-world experiment (section)

{{Short description|Experiments examining the average path length for social networks}}
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[[File:Six degrees of separation.svg|thumb|upright=1.3|Milgram concluded from his small-world experiments that any two random people in the United States would be linked by a chain of (on average) six steps.]]

The '''small-world experiment''' comprised several experiments conducted by [[Stanley Milgram]] and other researchers examining the [[average path length]] for [[social network]]s of people in the United States.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Milgram|first=Stanley|date=May 1967|title=The Small World Problem|journal=Psychology Today|publisher=Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.}}</ref> The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a [[Small-world network|small-world]]-type network characterized by short path-lengths. The experiments are often associated with the phrase "[[six degrees of separation]]", although Milgram did not use this term himself.