# how many people do people know?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 21, 2001, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131 "2001-01-21T15:49:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zub](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a6a055/32.png) [@zub](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zub)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2001, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131/1 "2001-01-21T15:49:01Z")

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this is really an interesting thought  
how many people, on an average, does a person know?  
lets include relatives, friends and others (such as tv personalities etc)

any answers??

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**Author:** ![August\_West](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/august_west/32/18069_2.png) [@August\_West](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/August_West)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2001, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131/2 "2001-01-21T18:21:58Z")

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This question is cross-posted in IMHO. If you want factual or statistical answers, leave it here. If you want 150 people guessing at how many people they know, have this one closed.

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**Author:** ![August\_West](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/august_west/32/18069_2.png) [@August\_West](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/August_West)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2001, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131/3 "2001-01-21T18:29:28Z")

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I see that you’re new, so I’ll elaborate a little.

First, Welcome to the SDMB, **zub**!  
Secondly, posting the same question in more than one forum is frowned upon. I will stand by my characterizations of GQ and IMHO so, depending on the answers you seek, ask a moderator to close one of the two threads.

Hope you have fun fighting ignorance with us.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2001, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131/4 "2001-01-21T19:32:13Z")

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I think that the question is better suited to GQ (presuming that someone, somewhere knows the answer), so I’ll leave this one open and give the IMHO mods a heads-up.

Meanwhile, **zub** , it might help if you clarify your question a bit. What do you mean by “know”? Since you’re including celebrities there, it looks like you mean “people that a given person would recognize on sight”, even if it’s not mutual. What about people with whom you’re acquainted, but have never seen? I might say, for instance, that I know **TubaDiva** , but I haven’t a clue what she looks like. Do you count fictional characters? I can certainly identify a picture of Mickey Mouse.

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**Author:** ![ScoobyTX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@ScoobyTX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ScoobyTX)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2001, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-do-people-know/51131/5 "2001-01-21T19:42:30Z")

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If you take as axiomatic the old saw that any given person in the world is at most 6 degrees of separation from any other, then the number of persons the average person directly knows is the sixth root of the population.

This comes out to about 43 persons.