SOC 3332 Lecture 8: (8) It’s a Small World - The Six Degrees Thesis & (9) Feedback Loops and the Network Effect

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3332
• Professor: Ariel Fuenzalida

Document Summary

2/8/17 & 2/10/17 (8) it"s a small world: the six degrees thesis: the small world phenomenon refers to the fact that social networks are rich in short paths. It is a basic statement about the abundance of these paths which join nodes to one another. These acquaintances would do the same, and so on. One-third of the letters arrived at the target person" and it was found that the initial participants were only about six links away from them. This study proves that we live in a small world. He also came up with two facts about large social networks: short paths are there in abundance and people acting without any sort of global map" of the network are effective at collectively finding these short paths. Triadic closure works to limit the number of people you can reach through short paths. By superimposing these two things, you can generate algorithms that can demonstrate connectivity.