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• Six Degrees of Separation

  

  
  

14 Responses to “Six Degrees of Separation”

1. D.B. Cooper says:

   June 2, 2009 at 3:39 pm

   I was surprised no mention was made of Stanley Milgram and his 1967 'small world experiment'.

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2. Jenny says:

   June 3, 2009 at 3:40 am

   This is how facebook and all those other social networking sites got to be

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3. Kedrick says:

   June 8, 2009 at 2:36 am

   I must admit I'm genuinely impressed! Network Science is truly the next great generational break through.

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4. Karen Colville says:

   June 11, 2009 at 4:26 am

   The journey of the packages and the Scientists theory and the development with potential is amazing.This is one of the most excellent quality films going.Thanks! Yes we are all in this together.:)

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5. fancypandy says:

   June 14, 2009 at 7:18 pm

   only three out of 40 make it, thats not very many!

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6. Type6 says:

   June 18, 2009 at 11:19 pm

   This docu makes me want to study network science… or get a job at UPS ;)!

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7. David says:

   June 30, 2009 at 6:51 pm

   i like the idea of scientists using the networking pattern as a way to combat disease. it sounds really plausible.

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8. Rob says:

   July 2, 2009 at 11:33 am

   Networks are very interesting. Never thought about connection between people in the world.

   So I may be connected with a seperation of max 6 degrees with the guy/girl reading my comment now. Very interesting!

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9. Tyler says:

   July 20, 2009 at 9:27 pm

   Wow. Brilliant, fascinating, and relevant. I can't wait to start hearing about this in the news!

   I think this theory might also help explain how mass builds up in atoms, and in solar systems and galaxies too. All of the matter collects in hub networks.

   Again, brilliant.

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10. BEEBfan says:

    July 26, 2009 at 2:18 am

    i love bbc documentaries!!

    Reply
11. Bendik says:

    August 16, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    Wanna try it out, Rob? If you e-mail me your name, city and occupation I could try to get you a package (wow, this sounds like a scam ;) ). I live in Norway, so it would be an interesting project.

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12. Lordrefaa says:

    September 20, 2009 at 6:59 am

    I don't mean to reduce the importance of network theory, but as far as human relation networks are concerned (the most traditional understanding of the "six degrees"), two variables have been totally shadowed here : evolution in time and technology. Some societies can be perfectly described by the network theory, but not the entire humanity, at least not yet. Let's not forget that for centuries no connections existed between some continents! So if we want to apply this mathematical model to human relations, we need to define a "level of progress", some minimum "technological" media, allowing the existence of hubs and random links. Furthermore, the relevant networks for health issues might be the casual meeting network, which can be more interconnected (public spaces, transportation…) as well as more clustered (small islands). To be rigorous one needs to explicit the equivalents of abstract mathematical properties such as connectivity, link, size, "small" number… The result of the experiment is clear : 3 packages over 20 is a low success rate, both numbers being anyway too small to be a valid statistical set.

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13. casstete says:

    December 23, 2009 at 7:48 am

    I'm missing the genetic links between different cultures , tribes or civilisations which should indicate the origines of basicaly all of us ….. also what would the network look like 200 years ago ? …. would it not be a single hub at some point … which again would pouint us to the origins of civilisation and geneticaly speaking we should be able to backtrack all the way to the first man "and know " if we are missing a link ….. not guess as is the case at present .

    we should be able to pinpoint the locations of previous civilisations by using the oldest known cities as

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14. Abdullahi says:

    March 19, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    I find it really interesting too :) , I never thought about it that way though I longed convinced myself that this world is made up of some general principles and thats one reason we can make analogies. Take for example that if an unqualified person gets a job, we usually say a round peg in a square hole. and when you visually picture are round peg in a square hole we know we would see some space at the angles of the square, which can help us now relate space as responsibility across 2 entirely different things…it is really intriguing.

    Though one thought is that the nodes/people that usually have less links eventually evolve to become hubs, you get to know alot of people in facebook and in school , when you travel so eventually you are likely going to become a hub someday. And i think the ones that have the most access to communication devices or means are usually the ones that get to become the hubs.

    Amazing designing from a seemingly chaotic thing.

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