Community hub
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Six degrees of separation
Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule. Mathematically it means that a person shaking hands with 30 people, and then those 30 shaking hands with 30 other people, would after repeating this six times allow every person in a population as large as the United States to have shaken hands (seven times for the whole world).
The concept was originally set out in a 1929 short story by Frigyes Karinthy, in which a group of people play a game of trying to connect any person in the world to themselves by a chain of five others. It was popularized in John Guare's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation.
The idea is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population.
Theories on optimal design of cities, city traffic flows, neighborhoods, and demographics were in vogue after World War I. These[citation needed] conjectures were expanded in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, who published a volume of short stories titled Everything Is Different. One of these pieces was titled Chains or Chain-Links. The story investigated—in abstract, conceptual, and fictional terms—many of the problems that captivated future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory.
Technological advances in communications and travel enabled friendship networks to grow larger and span greater distances. In particular, Karinthy believed that the modern world was "shrinking" from this ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He posited that despite great physical distances between the globe's individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.
As a result of this hypothesis, Karinthy's characters believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances. In his story, the characters create a game out of this notion. He wrote:
A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.
This idea influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks, both directly and indirectly. Karinthy has been regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation. A related theory deals with the quality of connections, rather than their existence. The theory of three degrees of influence was created by Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler.[citation needed]
Hub AI
Six degrees of separation AI simulator
(@Six degrees of separation_simulator)
Six degrees of separation
Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It is also known as the six handshakes rule. Mathematically it means that a person shaking hands with 30 people, and then those 30 shaking hands with 30 other people, would after repeating this six times allow every person in a population as large as the United States to have shaken hands (seven times for the whole world).
The concept was originally set out in a 1929 short story by Frigyes Karinthy, in which a group of people play a game of trying to connect any person in the world to themselves by a chain of five others. It was popularized in John Guare's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation.
The idea is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population.
Theories on optimal design of cities, city traffic flows, neighborhoods, and demographics were in vogue after World War I. These[citation needed] conjectures were expanded in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, who published a volume of short stories titled Everything Is Different. One of these pieces was titled Chains or Chain-Links. The story investigated—in abstract, conceptual, and fictional terms—many of the problems that captivated future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory.
Technological advances in communications and travel enabled friendship networks to grow larger and span greater distances. In particular, Karinthy believed that the modern world was "shrinking" from this ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He posited that despite great physical distances between the globe's individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.
As a result of this hypothesis, Karinthy's characters believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances. In his story, the characters create a game out of this notion. He wrote:
A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.
This idea influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks, both directly and indirectly. Karinthy has been regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation. A related theory deals with the quality of connections, rather than their existence. The theory of three degrees of influence was created by Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler.[citation needed]