If you count TV shows, I have a Bacon number of 3. I was on Jeopardy! with Alex Trebek, who was in Short Cuts with Anne Archer, who was in Hero at Large with Kevin Bacon.
or
My number is 3. I was on The Challengers with Dick Clark, who was in The Phynx with Larry Hankin, who was in She’s Having a Baby with Kevin Bacon.
Anybody know how William Rufus Shafter could go from a 10 on that chart back then to infinity now?
The classification system seems to have changed. To get the first few links to work, you have to explicitly choose to include News in the advanced options. Apparently something that that is tagged in IMDb with both Short and News only counts as News.
I any version I get, the first four are always News. They aren’t the first four given back in 2013, but are instead:
[ol]
[li]William Rufus Shafter was in “Surrender of General Toral” (1898) with Joseph Wheeler (IV).[/li]
[li]Joseph Wheeler (IV) was in “General Wheeler and Secretary of War Alger at Camp Wikoff” (1898) with Russell Alexander Alger[/li]
[li]Russell Alexander Alger was in “President McKinley’s Inspection of Camp Wikoff” (1898) with William McKinley (I).[/li]
[li]William McKinley (I) was in “Presentation of Nation’s Sword to Admiral Dewey” (1899) with George Dewey (I)[/ol][/li]
Dewey was in the drama The Battle Cry of Peace (1915), which can then be used in various ways to make it three steps to Kevin Bacon.
(I do note that the 2013 version does seem to work, as I followed it manually first, trying to find the broken link, before I tried just going to the site. But I can’t get the actual site to change those first four.)
Assuming that being credited in a group counts (that is, not an extra but a member of a group credited by the group name in the film credits) I have a Bacon number of 3 via multiple routes. Yay me.
Which reminds me: must start working on that math paper so I can get an Erdős number…
Nearly any academic paper at all will give you an Erdös number. Mathematicians tend to get lower ones, yes, but mathematicians also publish with researchers in other fields, and they in turn publish with others, and so on. Einstein, for instance, has an Erdös number of 2, so every physicist’s Erdös number is at most two higher than their Einstein number.
What is “News” consisting of? Are these filmed newsreels shown in theaters?
Does your face have to appear? Does it have to be moving? Can you be on the crew?
Now that this Zombie has been resurected, I recall an interesting article saying that the IMDB database is big enough to be interesting but small enough to anyalize.
Found the site: The Oracle of Bacon (which may be mentioned aerlier)
There are better centers (Eric Roberts wins)
Brian
I remember spending the better part of a day figuring out the answer to the original question back in 2001.
I’m proud to say that I made the official Bacon Hall of Fame back in 1997, for finding someone with a Bacon number of 7. I’m one of the first couple dozen listed. It was a slow time during grad school.
I just discovered I have an official Kevin Bacon Number of 3! I also discovered that I am in fact listed in IMBD, but they left out my middle initial, which is part of my official SAG-AFTRA name. I knew I have an unofficial Bacon Number of 2, thanks to my extra work, but I had no idea I was official!
Just found out my Bacon number is 3.
I was in a TV show with Kaori Momoi, she was in Emperor with Tommy Lee Jones, he was in JFK with Bacon.
I believe you can report that sort of thing if you are so inclined. There would be a link on your page.
@drag dog: As for what makes something News, I don’t really know. These shorts are all really short (less than a minute, usually), with no real context. I can only guess that they were small segments of newsreels.
I am pleased to report that, in 2016 Manos Returns reduced this to a Bacon score of 4!
I could get it corrected, if I want to pony up about $20 per month for an IMDB Pro membership. I could also add in the credit that got me my SAG card back in the 80s, in an episode of an obscure show, though I may have to dig up my old VHS tape of the episode. 
Counting TV shows, I have a Bacon number of 3, as I appeared on two episodes of Academic Challenge, a high-school quiz hosted by Don Webster. Webster has a credit for a 2015 episode of The Seventies, as does Lesley Stahl, who was on the 1997 CableACE Awards telecast with Kevin.