I came up with the following theory today, and I want to give it a web presence before anyone else tries to invent the same theory.
Gucwa’s Law of Wikipedia states that every article on Wikipedia is 6 or fewer degrees of separation from the Wikipedia article on World War II. That is, starting at any given article on Wikipedia, you can get to the World War II article by following six or fewer links.
(In most test cases I’ve done, this can be accomplished in three or four. I don’t think I’ve seen any at all yet that required all six. Sometime in the future I might tighten Gucwa’s Law to five or four degrees of separation.)
I challenge anyone to disprove this law by finding an article that does not meet this requirement. Unfortunately, this “law” cannot really be proven, it can only be disproven. So, I am opening it up to the scrutiny of the public eye for testing.
I realize that a) I haven’t really tried this out/am not that familiar with Wikipedia’s workings and b) we look up *very* different thinks on Wikipedia, but I’m assuming that it would be very hard for some of the things I search for to be that closely linked to an article on World War II, if possible at all. I’m sure a thorough gentleman like yourself would have already tried to link more obscure articles, likes ones about donkey punching, and you must have succeeded, so maybe you’re right, which is one of the reasons I’m not going to bother testing this out.
Because of the above, laziness, and busyness (but mostly laziness), I’m waiting for someone more involved (well, Mike) to disprove this, because I believe it can be done.
I did this one in 3.
Donkey Punching -> California -> United States -> World War 2
Dammit.
Hah. Awesome. I tried it out and it seems true. Mostly because almost any country or date will get you there pretty quick. I guess we need some article not connected with time or space even the slightest.
Although, I suspect that if I try to disprove it, five minutes later, some modification from anon-162.unh.edu will add the line “The Nazis were researching donkey punching as far back as 1942.” Tricky Gucwa.
You can make it from 194 (number) to World War II in just two hops (via Roman Numeral). This works presumably for any other number as well.
World War II just shows up everywhere. It’s crazy.
Look at this: Six Degrees of Wikipedia.
Using the utility linked by Michael Terry… I have disproven Gucwa’s Law of Wikipedia… There are 7 degrees of seperation between “Nanoparticles” and “World War II” Bwahaha.. This only took 3 attempts thru the Six Degrees utility on my part. Theory disproven.. Until someone writes a new article about Nazi Astrophysicists… lol..
As it turns out, that utility doesn’t find an optimal route. Just by looking at the article on Nanoparticles, I can see that it links to United States, which goes right to World War II. 2 hops. Sorry, Mark. =(