Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees

[formercia]

Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees
By JOHN MARKOFF and SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: November 21, 2011



The world is even smaller than you thought.
.

Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase “six degrees of separation” into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported on Monday that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74.

The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb.

The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than one-tenth of the world’s population. The findings were posted on Facebook’s site Monday night.

The experiment took one month. The researchers used a set of algorithms developed at the University of Milan to calculate the average distance between any two people by computing a vast number of sample paths among Facebook users. They found that the average number of links from one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74. In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37.

--snip--


This may be a partial explanation as to why the Arab Spring and OWS have been so successful.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/technology/between-you-and-me-4-74-degrees.html

[bananas]

1. k&r - the 'balkanization of the internet' has not occurred. nt

[bananas]

2. Interesting that one of the NYT article's authors is named "Markoff".

Various mis-spellings:

• Markoff Cheney
  About 400,000 results (0.24 seconds)
  Did you mean: markoff chaney
  Search Results
  The Official Markoff Cheney Homepage: REAL ULTIMATE POWER
  www.oocities.org/officialswimodin/markoffcheney.html
  Markoff Cheney can send any memo he wants! Markoff Cheney pwns hoedads ALL the time and doesn't even think twice about it. This dude is so crazy and ...
  
  
  
• Markoff Chaney http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markoff_Chaney
  
  'The key Discordian practice known as "Operation Mindfuck" is exemplified in the character of Markoff Chaney (a play on the mathematical random process called Markov chain).'
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markoff_Chaney
  
  
  
• Markov Chain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain
  

[formercia]

3. Markov Chain

Always looking forward, never backward. A Future not dependent on History.

[bananas]

4. HTML was supposed to be stateless.

Then they added cookies and sessions and messed it all up.

[formercia]

5. Then there was javascript...

We could be Internet Luddites like Rimjob and keep everything compatible with Netscape 1.0.x

I think we should all go back to the Landline BBS and Fidonet.:evilgrin:

[bananas]

6. Fidonet was amazing! nt

[formercia]

7. It might be a useful tool for OWS to bypass the Internet .

A good backup system, easily implemented. Can be as simple as point to point landline.

[Ready4Change]

8. This does NOT mean I'll friend you. :)

I'm snobby that way. :D

[formercia]

11. Hey, I'm picky too.

sometimes...it all depends.:evilgrin:

[hunter]

9. I'm not on facebook.

Does that mean it's 5.74 degrees?

[progressoid]

10. Have they consulted Kevin Bacon?

He's the authority on the subject. I know, because I read it on the internet.

[Thor_MN]

12. I have facebook "Friends" that I have never met, never had a conversation with.

Most games on Facebook reward for having "neighbors". This results in friending people that your sole connection to is a silly game.