CONNECTED: Win a pair of top price tickets for Six Degrees Of Separation at the Old Vic

To celebrate the release of CONNECTED – the book – we are offering you the chance to win a pair of top price tickets at the Old Vic.  All you have to do is answer the following question and become a fan of the Connected Facebook Profile ‘Be Connect’. For full terms and conditions, click here.

In which US State did Stanley Milgram hand out letters addressed to a Boston business man during his orginal experiment in the 1960s?

[excerpt from the book] Stanley Milgram masterminded … a famous experiment showing that people are all connected to one another by an average of “six degrees of separation” (your friend is one degree from you, your friend’s friend is two degrees, and so on). Milgram’s experiment, conducted in the 1960s, involved giving a few hundred people who lived in ….. a letter addressed to a businessman in Boston, more than a thousand miles away. They were asked to send the letter to somebody they knew personally. The goal was to get it to someone they thought would be more likely than they to have a personal relationship with the Boston businessman. And the number of hops from person to person that the letter took to reach the target was tracked. On average, six hops were required. This amazing fact initiated a whole set of investigations into the small-world effect originally characterized by de Sola Pool and Kochen, and it entered popular culture too, with John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation and even the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.[end excerpt]

To enter the competition, first you must become friends with the Facebook Profile ‘Be Connect.’ Click here to do this.

Next, you must answer the question above on the main Connected Fan Page.

The aim of the experiment is to demonstrate how easy it is to form a social network online – and there are chances to win prizes for friends with the most connections within this network (see T&Cs).

More about Connected:

Read more: Authors Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler on the Amazing Power of Social Networks

Watch more: Connected video – The Laughter Epidemic

Watch more: Connected video – Why Fat is Catching