Talk:Bacon number

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[edit] Rewrite

I just reorganized and reworded most of the article. I took out these two excerpts because I shouldn't find reliable sources for them:

"Notably, Bacon is not the most linkable actor. That honour (as of December 30, 2004) goes to Rod Steiger. The average Steiger number in the acting community is 2.679. By contrast, the average Bacon number is 2.955."

"Using one of the actors with the highest known finite Bacon number (8), William Rufus Shafter as the centre of the acting universe instead of Bacon, we can find two actors with a Rufus Shafter number of 15."

If anyone can provide proof for either of these, please put them back.

The entire cast of the 2004 film Primer no longer have have infinite Bacon numbers - "Samantha Thomson was in World Without Waves (2001) with ..."

I agree with Tolo - Kevin Bacon isn't famous because of the game - it's famous because of him. I have edited the opening sentence to reflect this.Tellkel 23:25, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Forgive me, but is Kevin Bacon only famous because of this Trivia (as the page currently says)? Personally, I doubt it. Possibly reword? Tolo 08:42, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

I was just wondering... What is the significance of the Bacon number? Does it only have to do with the game "Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon", or is there some other application for it? thefamouseccles 08:02 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"we can find two actors with a Rufus Shafter number of 15." Nice, but I don't see the connection to the Bacon Number. Is the article trying to say that using Rufus Shafter numbers, we can find people with a higher finite number?

"By contrast, the average Bacon number is 2.943." How can the average be around 3000 with 8 being the highest finite number known?

62.45.129.214 11:49, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's a decimal point, not a thousands separator. --Angr/(comhrá) 23:01, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can someone reword/explain what is written bellow. "record largest finite bacon number by year"? What does that mean? Why is 1998 "all 7s"? but 1997 is just 7? A bacon number of 7?

Actors with record largest finite Bacon number by year Year Record 1996 7 1997 7 1998 all 7s 1999 8 2000 all 8s Dec 2000 9, 10 Jul 2003 all 8s

(Quoting the article) "Relaxing the definition of Bacon number to include crew, however, yields an Bacon number of 3 for Erdős. N is a number had original music by Mark Adler, who also provided music for The Rat Pack, which co-starred Joe Mantegna, who appeared with Bacon in Queens Logic."
I still don't see how this connects Paul Erdős to Kevin Bacon. Someone needs to connect Erdős to Adler. Jxyama 18:27, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

My bad. I see it now. Jxyama 18:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fun stuff

Some specific noteworthy people of interest:

Ronald Reagan has a Kevin Bacon number of 2:

  1. Ronald Reagan was in Young Doctors, The (1961) with Eddie Albert
  2. Eddie Albert was in Big Picture, The (1989) with Kevin Bacon

Adolf Hitler has a Kevin Bacon number of 3.

  1. Adolf Hitler was in Ewige Jude, Der (1940) with Curt Bois
  2. Curt Bois was in Great Sinner, The (1949) with Kenneth Tobey
  3. Kenneth Tobey was in Hero at Large (1980) with Kevin Bacon

Pope John Paul II has a Kevin Bacon number of 4.

  1. Pope John Paul II was in Padre Pio - Tra cielo e terra (2000) with Giovanni Lombardo Radice
  2. Giovanni Lombardo Radice was in Gangs of New York (2002) with Martin Scorsese
  3. Martin Scorsese was in Bringing Out the Dead (1999) with Arthur J. Nascarella
  4. Arthur J. Nascarella was in In the Cut (2003) with Kevin Bacon

thought someone might find this interesting...  ALKIVAR™ 01:16, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


I'd suggest William Rufus Shafter has a Bacon Number of 7:

1 William Rufus Shafter - Surrender of General Toral - Joseph Wheeler

2 Joseph Wheeler - General Wheeler and Secretary of War Alger at Camp Wikoff - Russell Alexander Alger

3 Russell Alexander Alger - President McKinley's Inspection of Camp Wikoff - William McKinley

4 William McKinley - Fifty Years Before Your Eyes - Charles Chaplin

5 Charles Chaplin - The Great Dictator - Don Brodie

6 Don Brodie - Murphy's Law - David Hayman

7 David Hayman - Where the Truth Lies - Kevin Bacon

Lidless

Note: The entire cast of the 2004 film Primer have infinite Bacon numbers


[edit] Reeve vs. Steiger

The page has been edited to indicate that Christopher Reeve, not Rod Steiger, is the best center in IMDb - a claim also appearing on the page for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I assume this information comes from IMDbPro, which calculates Bacon numbers and perhaps similar statistics for other actors. Can anyone verify that Reeve currently has the lowest number? This seems odd, since he doesn't even make the top 1000 best centers on the Oracle of Bacon list [1]. --Ben Zimmer 19:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I was unable to confirm the info using IMDb, IMDbPro, Google. So I've removed it for now. IMDbPro does not appear to compute data concerning "centers", only the standard Bacon number. Because of this, I find the claim that the info was on IMDb somewhat suspect. I also removed the IMDbPro link, as I couldn't see anything relevant to the article that wasn't already available (freely) from the Oracle of Bacon site. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 01:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I've also changed the info at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where the info apparently originated. I will ask the editor who added the info where he got it. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 01:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I find it hard to believe Rod Steiger is better connected than Christopher Lee. My understanding was that Lee is the best connected actor (he would anecdotally appear to have appeared in more films, in a greater variety of roles with more actors from both European and American cinema).
It's not about being better connected. It's about being connected to more people who are connected to more people who are better connected. At present, Lee and Steiger are at about the same point, with Dennis Hopper slightly ahead of them in the number one spot. I typed in the top 20 of their out of date top 1000 list, and Hopper was the clear winner. You can type any name in yourself to see, though I imagine it will continue to change over time. The calculator is at [2].--Parableman 02:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Oops, I forgot to write about the response I got to my query:

I mistyped when I wrote that section, and I meant to type Christopher Lee. My information is from late 2003, but from the same site, so I guess that yours is more accurate. Jared W!!! | Write to me, why don't you? 11:04, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

So that's what happened. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 02:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[copied over from Talk: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon by User:Chan-Ho Suh] That would be Christopher Lee, not Christopher Reeve. Reeve isn't close. The current leader, though, is Dennis Hopper. The place to type in someone's name is [3]. The 1000 best centers list that has Steiger on top is [4]. Dennis Hopper is currently ahead of everyone else in the top 20 of that list. I didn't bother to go beyond that. I'm not sure how to cite that as a source. Is that supposed to count as original research and thus off-limits? If I posted it on my blog, I could cite it as me claiming this is true, but I don't know the general convention on that sort of thing here. --Parableman 02:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the best thing is to just to name the top center on the list of best centers and note the date of the list. I'm sure they will update the list sometime. Doing your own research and posting on your blog so as to cite it, is heavily frowned upon. But it might be ok to just say the information was retrieved on such and such date; in principle, it should be verifiable as the UVA people, I'm sure, keep good records. That might be a little controversial though. Probably, even then, the only thing you can really say is that Steiger is behind Hopper on such-and-such date. BTW, it seems a lot of good stuff, like this stuff about centers, has been removed from the article. It doesn't seem to me that's an improvement. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 02:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Primer

I removed the following from the "Notable Bacon numbers" section because at least one of the cast (David Sullivan (IX)) seems to have appeared in other films alongside other actors, and so would quite likely have a finite Bacon number.

The entire cast of the 2004 film Primer (Bacon number: infinite/undefined), as none of them has yet appeared in any other films (as of 2004). [5]

--A bit iffy 14:43, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

See [6] for (David Sullivan (IX))'s Bacon number. It's 3. That makes everyone else in the movie at least as close as 4. --Parableman 02:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can someone verify this?

I removed:

According to the website "Oracle of Bacon", "about 12% of all actors cannot be linked to the rest of the movie universe, either because they have appeared only in TV features or straight-to-video releases that the Oracle doesn't count, or because they have not appeared in any features with actors from the Hollywood mainstream."

Since I couldn't find it on the mentioned website. Maybe I missed something obvious, but if someone could find the exact webpage for this and include it in the article (you can use the web url citation template as with the other references), that would be great. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 02:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I just wanted to add

George W. Bush has a Bacon number of 4.

George W. Bush was in Krajina meho srdce (2004) with Zuzana Stivinova (II). Zuzana Stivinova (II) was in Pasti, pasti, pasticky (1998) with Karel Roden (I). Karel Roden (I) was in 15 Minutes (2001) with David Alan Grier. David Alan Grier was in Woodsman, The (2004) with Kevin Bacon.

[edit] This article in the Wikipedia store

I've made some merchandise for the Wikipedia store based on this article: Bacon number section. Let me know what you think on the meta page. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 01:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

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