Scientists use e-mail to test the “Six Degrees of Separation” theory
Are you friends with Stephen Hawking, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Saddam Hussein? It doesn't seem very likely. Or think of any random person—if you wanted to get in touch with him, what should you do? You could do it like this: find a relative or friend most likely to have some connection with him, and ask that person to pass along your greetings. Then that person does the same and looks for the next relative or friend. So, how many such relative-or-friend “transfer stations” would it take in total to find the person?
The answer to this question may be a bit surprising: no matter whether you want to find that muscular tough guy, the author writing this article, or any ordinary person on this planet, it takes only about 6 steps of “transfer” (the last step being the target). Scientists at Columbia University recently used the Internet to test this astonishing hypothesis on a worldwide scale—the so-called “Six Degrees of Separation” phenomenon.
Six e-mails circle the globe
Thirty-five years ago, an American psychologist, Stanley Milgram, proposed his “Six Degrees of Separation” theory in Psychology Today. He believed that any two strangers could establish contact through “friends of friends,” and that the number of acquaintances between the two people was about 5.
It does indeed sound novel and interesting, and this “Six Degrees of Separation” phenomenon has indeed been verified in some smaller circles, but does it really hold true for any two strangers anywhere on this planet?
Actually, verifying this hypothesis is a bit difficult. The method Milgram used back then was to have volunteers pass along packages. He randomly selected more than 300 people in Nebraska and Kansas and had them deliver packages to two “targets” in Boston. Of course, it was almost certain that the packages would not reach the targets directly, so Milgram had the volunteers give the packages to relatives or friends they thought most likely to establish contact with the targets. However, both the scale of the experiment and its results were not very encouraging in supporting the “Six Degrees of Separation” hypothesis.
The latest experimental results come from a research group led by Duncan Watts of Columbia University's sociology department. Last week, Science published their paper on a large-scale worldwide test of the “Six Degrees of Separation” hypothesis. Watts had a “package” that was more economical, faster, and easier to track: e-mail.
For details see: http://www.oursci.org/news/2003/081501.htm
Are you friends with Stephen Hawking, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Saddam Hussein? It doesn't seem very likely. Or think of any random person—if you wanted to get in touch with him, what should you do? You could do it like this: find a relative or friend most likely to have some connection with him, and ask that person to pass along your greetings. Then that person does the same and looks for the next relative or friend. So, how many such relative-or-friend “transfer stations” would it take in total to find the person?
The answer to this question may be a bit surprising: no matter whether you want to find that muscular tough guy, the author writing this article, or any ordinary person on this planet, it takes only about 6 steps of “transfer” (the last step being the target). Scientists at Columbia University recently used the Internet to test this astonishing hypothesis on a worldwide scale—the so-called “Six Degrees of Separation” phenomenon.
Six e-mails circle the globe
Thirty-five years ago, an American psychologist, Stanley Milgram, proposed his “Six Degrees of Separation” theory in Psychology Today. He believed that any two strangers could establish contact through “friends of friends,” and that the number of acquaintances between the two people was about 5.
It does indeed sound novel and interesting, and this “Six Degrees of Separation” phenomenon has indeed been verified in some smaller circles, but does it really hold true for any two strangers anywhere on this planet?
Actually, verifying this hypothesis is a bit difficult. The method Milgram used back then was to have volunteers pass along packages. He randomly selected more than 300 people in Nebraska and Kansas and had them deliver packages to two “targets” in Boston. Of course, it was almost certain that the packages would not reach the targets directly, so Milgram had the volunteers give the packages to relatives or friends they thought most likely to establish contact with the targets. However, both the scale of the experiment and its results were not very encouraging in supporting the “Six Degrees of Separation” hypothesis.
The latest experimental results come from a research group led by Duncan Watts of Columbia University's sociology department. Last week, Science published their paper on a large-scale worldwide test of the “Six Degrees of Separation” hypothesis. Watts had a “package” that was more economical, faster, and easier to track: e-mail.
For details see: http://www.oursci.org/news/2003/081501.htm
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