High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In mathematics, physics and sociology a small-world network is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but most nodes can be reached from every other by a small number of hops or steps. A small world network, where nodes represent people and edges connect people that know each other, captures the small world phenomenon of strangers being linked by a mutual acquaintance. Many empirical graphs are well modeled by small-world networks. Social networks, the connectivity of the Internet, and gene networks all exhibit small-world network characteristics.