The Power of Six Degrees

[#1]

Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and group behavior in online communities and social networks.

Michael was voted a 2010 Influential Leader by CRM Magazine for his work on predictive social analytics and its application to Social CRM.He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere's Building Community blog and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu.

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You must have heard of the adage -- A picture is worth a 1000 words. In the modern multi-media infused society, I would say that a movie is worth 100 million words. Quite literally, if you count the number of frames in an hour long movie, it will come out to be about few hundred thousand frames. Since each frame (being a picture) is worth 1000 word, you will easily get to the number I quoted above.

I've just participated in a panel at MarketingProfs SocialTech2010 earlier this week. It was a great pleasure to co-present with Marc Smith, Thomas Lento, and Lawrence Liu on this panel moderated by Tatyana Kanzaveli. The topic of panel is "Using Social Network Analysis to Leverage the Dynamics of Social Media Interactions Inside and Outsi...."

I presented some of my current R&D on influencers, which involves a lot of social network analysis (SNA) and graph analysis. Despite my attempts to explain SNA, I felt that I often fall short in providing a full exposition on this interesting topic. I've recently come across an online version of an amazing TV documentary by The Science Channel on this subject. Connected: The Power of Six Degrees (2008) offers a great introduction to this fascinating field from a historical perspective. The story was very well presented. It was scientifically correct, and also understandable to the general layperson.

So if you have 47 minutes, I highly recommend watching this program. I can assure you that this will be much more enjoyable then reading a 100-million-word article on this topic. And you’d be surprised how much you will learn from this TV program. This will give me a little more time to organize some of my research results and write up the next series of blogs.

Let me know what you think. If you have any question or like to discuss any of the topics covered in this excellent documentary, please don't hesitate to leave me a comment here. As usual, I’m always happy to discuss any scientific matters. And I promise I will return with more discussion on Dunbar's number next week.

[#2]

Very interesting video.  Thanks for the link.  But only 3 out of 40 packages ever got to the intended final recipient - Marc Vidal!  That does not seem very conclusive to me.

[#3]

Hello mpjay

Thank you for the comment.

Although only 3 our of 40 packages reach the designated recipient, Marc Vidal, the result is consistent with the "6-degrees of separation" in the sense that all 3 packages that reach Marc Vidal took within 6 steps.

The experiment is not about whether people will forward the package. If that is the claim, then this experiment would be inconclusive. Rather, this experiment is about how many step it would take to reach the designated target if they decide to forward the message along the way.

Even in Stanley Milgram's original "Small World Experiment" the number of mails that reach the target was very low because it only take one person to refuse participation to break the chain. In his original experiment 232 out of 296 were never delievered. But of the 64 (out of 296) that were delievered to the correct target, they took average about 5.5 or 6 steps. So the result is consistent with the statement that people are separated by 6-degrees (aka the Small World effect). However, the Small World effect never claim anything about the number of people who will deliever the package. So the low delievery rate is not a problem if the result is consistent. And it is!

Alright, I hope I've clarify this point. Besides this potential confusion, the results summarized in this video is pretty accurate in terms of history and some of the well-know results from network science.

I know this video is very "sciency." So thank you for taking the time to commnet. See you again next time.

[#4]

Great video. Thanks for posting. I had no idea that Network Theory was so essential. I thought my nerdy math friend was just having fun drawing bubble and lines in his notebook

[#5]

Hello Mike,

Haven't seen you for a while. Welcome back.

Network Science is a growing discipline now. Because it has so many different applications in different fields, which is well protrayed in this documentary. We mathematicians do like to do a lot of weird stuff, including drawing weird graphs and diagrams, but usually it's for good reasons  

Good to see you back and talk to you later.