This talk is organised by the Warwick Mathematics Institute and is shared by Resonate.

Join Professor Ryan Martin (Iowa State University) for a free talk to understand the maths behind the theory that just about everyone in Hollywood is connected to Kevin Bacon.

The Kevin Bacon Game was invented in the 1990s and asked players to find the distance of any actor from Kevin Bacon. It is predicated on the notion that, at the time, Kevin Bacon was the centre of the (Hollywood) universe. Between every pair of actors, we measure the distance between them by constructing the shortest chain of actors so that consecutive members of the chain appeared in the same film. The branch of mathematics that addresses this model is known as graph theory. Graph theory is a rich and well-studied discipline with a host of unsolved problems. Graph theory is used to model electrical and computer networks, molecular structures, particle interactions and, of course, popular culture.

This talk is recommended for ages 16+.