I have no doubt that this truly is a small world, but I would like this belief confirmed for me empirically. The results of Milgram’s experiment are so awesome that I would like to replicate it somehow. Or at least daydream about it.
If you had a large gathering of people and had them list the names of a random bunch of people they know, I wonder how many names on average would be shared. How many names would have to be listed for everyone to have at least one “match” with another person? How many names on average would be shared by more than two people?
It seems to me like the internet would provide a perfect “place” to test the Small World Theory. Does anyone know if this has done been before?
David Barr Dunham
Michelle MacBride
Robert H. Chaney
Ezra Idlett
Wai-Ching Ho
Rick Hidalgo
Gwen Ireland
Michael Jones (bass baritone)
Charles Beall
Sandy Churchey
Lauren Bergey-from Philly
Judith Weis-from Maplewood, NJ
Terry Snell-from Atlanta,Ga
Robbie Causey-from Texas
Sam Colbert-from Kokomo, IN
Jenni Samson-from Fairfield, CA
Mary Anne Carletta-from NY
Kis Robertson-from Atlanta, GA
Beth Ravit-from New Jersey
Well, I thought about that friedo, and I decided that we’re not revealing anything besides names - names that are known anyway. I’m not revealing any private information about any of these people.
If I google myself I find gobs of stuff about me.
These names could come up anywhere; afterall, none of these people are in hiding - they’re all public names already.
So, yes, I did think about it; and I don’t see the harm.
And. as I’ve said before on this board, after a certain point your anonymity here is essentially at best paper-thin anyway. I’ve met many a Doper who knows my real name and where I live, and after a certain bit of exposure here, most of us with a thousand or more posts have dropped enough clues that any determined investigator could figure out who the heck we are.
Gerry Schriever.
Elizabeth Rensch.
Rex Butler.
Melissa Corcoran.
Keven Kleweno.
Jane Whitsett.
Steve (AKA Francis) Mahoney.
Cindy Cooper.
Kevin Bacon.
Rae Maness.
To give things a little boost, I’ve deliberately chosen people I know who are fairly well known in the community as well as their respective professions. And the fact that damn near everybody in this town is from some place else should increase the odds a bit also.
Except for one of them, I’m well enough acquinted with these people that they’d all recognize me, know my name, and strike up conversation where we left off last time.
I remember a website that used to exist (doesn’t anymore, I guess they went out of business) where you’d sign up and list (refer) your friends and they’d list their friends and so on… and you’d see how many people you had in common and how far it could go… or something like that. I don’t remember all the details exactly but it was basically a six degrees of separation thing.
I agree that it’s bad form to list other people’s names in a public forum without their permissiong.
Also, as the above post noted, it’s been done.
And, you’re just asking to spread another huge email chain letter that will never die as soon as someone gets the bright idea of forwarding this around to their friends.
Lastly, a list of names is meaningless. I know a Steve Mahoney (who was listed by honkytonkwillie), that’s a common enough name that I think it gets us nowhere.
I was in the Pittsburgh airport, (I don’t remember the exact name, KPIT) sitting at a bar, when I struck up a conversation with the two guys next to me. Through the next 15 minutes before my plane left, we found out what a small world it really is.
We asked the usual "Where are you from/Where are you headed questions. It turned out that guy #1 sold real estate in my area, and knew my Grandfather. “I used to hunt on his farm”, and remembered he had seen me “When you were just a baby…Your Grandpa was so proud.” (Guy #1, obviously knows guy #2, as they were business partners) Guy #2 orders another beer, and in the course of conversation with the waitress (about all of us sorta knowing each other) SHE mentions talking with the guy across the bar from us, and he was from the same city as guy #2. She apparently told guy #3, because he comes over and starts chatting…
Guy #3 turns out to be a distant cousin of guy #2 that he hasn’t seen since childhood. Through MORE conversation, it is found out that his (#3) brothers are very familiar with my area of Virginia…
Because they make a yearly trip to hunt on my grandparents farm. :eek:
On another plane trip, sitting in yet another bar, (this time at LAX) I spoke with a couple from Atlanta who knew my dad.
It makes you wonder how many connections you could make just talking to random people while traveling.
When I told my cousin the name of one of my friends in high school she said “there was a boy in my second grade class with that name” (in a different town). It was him; she also remembered his sister, who is now my wife. It also turned out that when this friend and I were in approx. sixth grade we were both in boy scouts, but different troops. We went on the same camp-out, watched the same man cook pancakes (he had a memorable technique), and never met. Also, his older brother graduated from the same high school the same year as my sister, but THEY never met.
Later I worked with a woman named Dee. One day her husband got a letter from Europe from a man with the same last name. He was tracing the family history and asked the husband to send what he knew about his side of the family. (I should add that the husband’s family had lived in the US for several generations.) Later the man sent them a family tree, tracing the name back 300 years to a small town in Germany.
Where Dee had been born.
Someone did an interesting study about coincidences; it wasmentioned in the NY Times Magazine a few weeks ago. The experimenter went into a class with, oh, say 100 students and asked everyone for their birthdate. Inevitably there were many duplications (by the time you get to 50 people the odds are even for at least one duplication).
She came back in and reported which dates were duplicates and asked the students to report on how surprising/interesting they found this phenomenon to be. Most students thought it was fairly unremarkable, but the students who had the duplicate birthdays thought it was amazing.
In other words, a coincidence is fascinating when you are involved. Otherwise, it is just a coincidence.
I’m sorry, I don’t have a link for this, but when listening to NPR last year there was a psychiatrist that claimed to have recreated the experiment and found it to be invalid. I wish I had a link, but for those really curious, I suppose we could first start on the NPR site.
It actually only takes 23 people for the odds to be better than break even for at least two of them to have the same birth date (excluding year).
Once while playing low limit poker in Las Vegas, I was chatting with the two people next to me. We came to find that I went to Jr. High School with one’s neice and was in the same college dorm with the other’s son’s childhood best friend. Stuff like that is bound to happen from time to time. It would be statistically amazing if it didn’t.
