Michael wrote... "I find it very hard to believe that someone who lets say lived and died in the hills of Kentucky without leaving a local geographical area (with no phone or computer of course) would be 6 to 7 introductions away from a nomad who lived and died in the mountains of Afghanistan in a similar small geographic area."
Just for fun.... Man in Kentucky knows a guy (1) who's son (2) joined the army. The son was recently deployed to Afghanistan where he met a local man (3) who was assisting the US military there. The man in Afghanistan is the nephew of the nomad who is living in the mountains (4). Now, the probability of this occurring is probably not that great, but it is not unreasonable either... especially when you consider that was only 4 steps and not the average 6.6. I can think of several other variations of the above that are all within 4-8 steps between the two. Just because the 2 individuals on either end of the chain are "remote and isolated" doesn't mean there aren't possible connections between them. (Admittedly it helped that you chose a country where the US military has been involved lately...) Also, the fact that the chain exists, does not say anything about the likelihood of the two people actually being introduced to each other, which in many cases is probably extremely rare and unlikely. It also depends on how we are going to actually define two people as knowing each other. Send an IM seems somewhat reasonable, but if I send an IM to a customer service representative at a web hosting company asking for support, does that mean that I actually "know" the person? And as previously mentioned, it isn't saying that everyone is within 6 connections because of the variability that likely exists.... Especially when you figure the connections between many people were likely 1 (ie they directly know each other) which could offset much more distant connections to average out at the 6.6 (I think that was the average). Knowing the variability (and skewness) of the distribution of connections would definitely be helpful in making sense of what it really means. I've deleted the original email at this point, but does anyone know what the range or standard deviation was for the number of connections? Also, does anyone know where this study itself (rather than a media report on it) has been published? Back to grading papers... -marc ======================================== G. Marc Turner, MEd, PhD Senior Lecturer & Technology Coordinator Department of Psychology Texas State University-San Marcos San Marcos, TX 78666 Phone: (512) 245-2526 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
