The six worst handshakes in the world. Does the rule of six handshakes work: my experiment. Is it true that the world is small
It was in the evening, there was nothing to do ... In the process of random surfing on the Internet, I came across an info on how to test the theory of a small world ("theory of 6 handshakes") in contact.
Who is too lazy to follow the link on Wiki, briefly on the subject: the theory of six handshakes is a theory according to which any two people on Earth are separated on average by only five levels of mutual acquaintances (and, accordingly, six levels of connections). The theory was put forward in 1969 by American psychologists Stanley Milgram and Jeffrey Travers. The hypothesis they proposed was that each person is indirectly acquainted with any other inhabitant of the planet through a chain of common acquaintances, on average, consisting of six people. Milgram relied on data from an experiment in two American cities. Residents of one city were given 300 envelopes, which had to be given to a certain person who lived in another city. Envelopes could be transferred only through their acquaintances and relatives. 60 envelopes reached the Boston addressee. After doing the math, Milgram determined that, on average, each envelope went through five people. And so the theory of "six handshakes" was born.
How to check VKontakte?
I state.
1. Write in the search for people any name and surname that come to mind 2. From the resulting list, select a person not from your city (better away, so that it is more interesting) 3. Go to his friends list and go to the page of the first in the list (strangers) friends are ranked by rating) 4. Repeat step 3, counting the number of "handshakes". On average, there are 3-5 transitions.
No sooner said than done! And since I'm a literary savvy girl, but with quite banal associations, the name came to mind first (pause and check yourself)
That's right, we are looking for Eugene Onegin. There are already 2 thousand of them in contact ... with a hook!
I go to the page to She has more friends. But the screen of her page is not inserted into the post, at least kill yourself! Censorship though! We will look for workarounds. I had to upload screenshots to the gallery and give links. I wonder if this will work?
And the topic of boobs, which is so exciting for our bloggers of the male sex, is completely revealed to itself.
From this mademoiselle I turn to the page of a certain handsome man, who has 2,350 people as friends, and not all of them are girls.
From his list of friends, the first page on the list is a page that appears on its page for some reason immediately in a knee-elbow position. Bingo! It turns out that we have one mutual friend with this charmer! Total - exactly 5 steps. In a slight stupefaction, I set up a control experiment.
Remembering the character of classical literature that was less banal and shocked me in my school years, I ask Ekaterina Izmailova in the search. There were 460 namesakes of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, if "VKontakte" is not lying.
I follow the link of the one that lives at the end of the world - in Magnitogorsk. At the same time I refresh my memory where it is.
Ms. Izmailova has someone first on her list of friends, who is also quite a sociable comrade.
Of his 1172 friends, I'm interested in the first one on the list - (I'm lucky to be handsome today!
)
0 %
He even has a mobile phone on the page, but this is not the main thing. The first from the list of 2,757 friends of Andrey is given a page of a certain VSU named after V.I. Masherova.
Of course, with Mr. Usovich, it immediately turns up Total - three "handshakes"
Further, in the control measurements, it turned out that 4 people bring me together (separate?) With Andrei Makarevich or his clone on the network, 5 with the abstract Vanya Sidorov, and 7 with Petya Ivanov.
I won’t tell you in detail anymore, I don’t have the strength to make screenshots, and the blog engine (Ay, developers!) is acting up, completely refusing to insert pictures. Damn those! I've been writing this post for two days, I'm tired. Everything, I post what happened. Don't shoot the pianist, he plays as best he can.
Well, the final question.
Do you, dear fellow citizens, feel your connection with the whole world? And how does it manifest itself?
Fridesh Karinti believed that any two people are connected by personal acquaintances, and the chain of contacts is usually five links. The Hungarian writer spoke about this in the story "Links of the chain". It has now been experimentally proven that Carinthy was right.
It happens that far from home we accidentally meet a person who knows our relatives, studied in the same class with one of our colleagues, or lived in the same house with a former boss. In such cases, we say that the world is small. How close is it and how far can the chain of acquaintances stretch? Could it lead to an English queen or a Hollywood star?
The first theory that any two people are connected by personal acquaintances, and the chain of contacts is usually five links, was formulated by Fridesh Karinti. In 1929, the Hungarian writer wrote the story "Links of the Chain", which was about the game. The experiment proved that the entire population of the planet is much closer to each other than one might think. At the beginning of the last century, the Earth was inhabited by one and a half billion people. It was necessary to choose any of them, famous or completely unknown, and build a chain of five people to connect through personal contacts.
In one of the fragments of the story, an example was described with the Nobel laureate in literature Selma Lagerlöf. The hero first came to the conclusion that she must know King Gustav of Sweden, as he presented her with an award. The king enjoyed playing tennis and participated in competitions where he met with Bela Curling. And this person personally knew the hero of the story. It only took two links, as it is much easier to find connections with a celebrity than with an ordinary person.
In the Russian-speaking environment, this idea is known as the “Theory of six handshakes”, and in English it is called the “Theory of six lines of distance”.
Experimental confirmation of the theory
An assumption that was not confirmed by practice would remain a hypothesis and an intellectual game, so experiments were carried out regularly. Psychologist Stanley Milgram was the first to confirm the correctness of the hypothesis about the acquaintance of all the inhabitants of the planet. In 1967, an American set up the "Close World" experiment.
In two US cities - Omaha and Wichita - 300 random participants were selected to contact a stockbroker in Boston by letter. Participants did not know the address, but had to figure it out through acquaintances. The letter was sent along the chain, each recipient added his name to it. After summarizing the results, it turned out that on average the chain consisted of five people or six connections.
Subsequent experiments were carried out under different conditions and with different initial data, but the results always turned out to be similar and confirmed the correctness of the hypothesis.
In 1998, Duncan Watts and Stephen Strugatz of Cornell University were able to create a mathematical model and replicate Milgram's experiment on a large scale. The study involved tens of thousands of people from all over the world. The recipients of the messages were citizens of different countries and continents, townspeople and rural residents belonging to different social groups. Letters were now sent via the Internet, but in this case the result was already known - the chains consisted mainly of six links. In addition, with the help of a mathematical model, it was possible to find out interesting patterns in the organization of human communities. It turned out, for example, that in global communications, people who simultaneously belong to several groups are especially useful.
The largest study was conducted by Microsoft experts Jure Leskovets and Eric Horwitz in 2006. The researchers analyzed more than 30 billion messages via MSN Messenger sent by 240 million users in 30 days. The study took about two years. Leskovets and Horwitz, of course, did not read the texts of messages, but they saw information about people: gender, age, location, frequency and volume of communications, contacts. The results of the laborious study of information are of scientific interest, but we are interested in a specific topic - there were 6.6 connections between two MSN users. That is, a number close to what we already know.
The Internet has greatly facilitated communications - social networks have services that allow you to trace the chain of mutual friends, games based on the "Close World" principle, network projects to explore the prospects of global information networks.
Myth or fact?
The theory of six handshakes is very popular. Small World is talked about in TV shows, social media, movies, and literature. The idea of accessibility of any person, of course, is attractive, because it's nice to feel familiar to a friend of the Queen of England, Bill Gates or Miss World.
However, it is still wrong to interpret the hypothesis so directly. First, six handshakes is an average. To reach a Tibetan monk or an African native, even three hundred steps may not be enough. Perhaps such a chain will not line up at all. Secondly, the opinion is erroneous that after a few steps, the possibility of communicating with a huge number of people opens up. Let's say everyone has a hundred friends who have the same number of contacts, and so on. But the truth is that people gravitate towards closed groups. We communicate with those who live nearby, with colleagues at work, like-minded people on religious or political views, with people who are close in terms of education or wealth, etc. If you thoroughly approach the clarification of connections, it turns out that the boundaries of a social group severely limit the number of acquaintances. At the third level, where theoretically the number of “familiar acquaintances” should approach a million, there will be “only” a few thousand of them.
The nuances of the theory lie not only in its misunderstanding, but also in its essence. The father of the theory, Fridesh Karinti, mentioned in his story that humanity was not always integral. For example, Gaius Julius Caesar could not have contacted an Aztec priest, even though they lived at the same time. The fact is that at that time Europeans did not yet know about the existence of America. Even in our century, when communications seem to have permeated all space, the world is not monolithic. Closed groups living in isolation remain inaccessible. The Internet, which connects people across continents, is not equally available in different parts of the world. The theory of six handshakes fully works in the USA, Europe, in the European part of Russia, in Australia, but there are too many places on the planet where the continuation of the chain becomes almost impossible.
Not everything is perfect in the study of theory and with numbers. Psychology professor Judith Kleinfeld noted in 2006 that the vast majority of letters in an experiment on building communication chains did not reach the addressees. 95% of Milgram's letters simply got lost in transit, and this applies to other studies as well. Under such conditions, one can hardly speak of the purity of the experiment. For all the attractiveness of the idea of the unity of mankind, the idea seems very doubtful, according to Professor Kleinfeld.
The study can also be subjected to fairly severe criticism, although the large numbers that Leskovets and Horwitz operated on are believed to be true. And yet - MSN is used by only 4% of the people on the planet, and they are distributed extremely unevenly.
Thus, the results of experiments are correct only for certain territories and social groups, but not for humanity in general. We will not abandon the theory of six handshakes, we will just wait until Internet technologies spread to the entire space of the Earth. Over time, people will come closer and closer, and this will certainly make the theory indisputable.
let's try
Perhaps the "Theory of Six Handshakes" is just a toy for residents of civilized countries with a developed Internet network. And yet we suggest you try to build your own chain. If you are reading this material, then you have access to the Internet.
The search for people in social networks is designed so that among the first friends of your acquaintances you will see those who are familiar to both of you. This rule greatly facilitates the construction of chains and allows you to apply the theory of handshakes in practice.
Use this hint and do the following:
- Select a person on the social network who is not your friend. The choice method is up to you: an interesting avatar, your favorite name, place of residence, etc.
- Go to the list of friends of the selected subject and check if you have mutual friends. It is possible that your chain will develop from the first step, but, most likely, the search will have to continue. Go to the page of the person who will be the first in the list of friends.
- Each time, go to the page of the first friend until you find common friends. You will be surprised, because mutual friends usually show up in less than five transitions.
- Count the number of steps - how many handshakes separate you from the person you chose completely at random. It turns out that you have common acquaintances with a reindeer herder from Yakutia or an Australian businessman. Now you can secure a contact by telling a new friend about your mutual friends.
The six-handshake theory is a theory according to which any two people on Earth are separated, on average, by only five levels of common acquaintances (and, accordingly, six levels of connections).
The theory was put forward in 1969 by American psychologists Stanley Milgram and Geoffrey Travers. The hypothesis they proposed was that each person is indirectly familiar with any other inhabitant of the planet through a short chain of mutual acquaintances. On average, this chain consists of six people.
Milgram relied on data from an experiment in two American cities. Residents of one city were given 300 envelopes, which had to be given to a specific person who lived in another city. Envelopes could be transferred only through their acquaintances and relatives. 60 envelopes reached the Boston addressee. After doing the math, Milgram determined that, on average, each envelope went through six people. And so the theory of "six handshakes" was born.
The Milgram experiment was repeated using e-mail by scientists from the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. They offered thousands of volunteers to "get through" to 20 classified people, who were reported only by the main characteristics: first name, last name, occupation, place of residence, education. The first successful attempt was to determine the postal address of one of these "classified" in Siberia. A volunteer from Australia found the address of the Siberian "target" with just four messages!
Analysis by Microsoft experts of the data received during the month of communication of 242,720,596 users took two years. The volume of the studied data was about 4.5 terabytes. On this database, it was found that each of the 240 million users of the service could "walk" to another in an average of 6.6 "steps". How the researchers mathematically proved the theory and the common joke that after five people each of us is familiar with the Queen of England.
By the way, on the basis of the "small world" theory, many popular games in the United States arose. For example, scientists play Erdős Number. The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős is one of the major scientists of the 20th century, having a huge number of co-authored works. You need to find the shortest chain from him to another famous scientist. If he wrote some work together with Erdős, then his Erdős number is equal to one. If in co-authorship with someone who, in turn, wrote something with Paul Erdős, then this number is two, and so on. Almost all Nobel laureates have small Erdős numbers.
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In modern society, there are few people who are not familiar with the theory of 6 handshakes. Now that the Internet has erased all boundaries between people who might otherwise never meet, this theory can be renamed the 6-click rule. However, few people know that it was described long before its appearance in the novel of the famous Hungarian writer Fridesh Karinti. The work belonged to the genre of fantasy and was published when no one even thought about the theory of 6 handshakes and its essence.
Theory 6 handshakes
It is difficult to argue with the statement that the world is small. Few people have not encountered a situation when, being in an unfamiliar society, they met mutual acquaintances. No one thinks about the fact that, in fact, human society is not infinite, it is limited by certain limits and to some extent closed. In theory, each of us can be acquainted with any person on the globe through mutual acquaintances or relatives.
It would seem that this is impossible. However, do not rush to conclusions. There is a theory of 6 handshakes, which is that all the people of the planet Earth are familiar with each other through 5 people, which is 6 levels of communication.
small world
Despite the fact that this theory looks fantastic at first glance, it has existed for a long time and has been confirmed more than once.
It is difficult to say when the expression "The world is small" appeared. Most likely, it originates from the times when people lived only in their own territory and practically did not travel beyond its borders. 
Over the years, the borders expanded, people first began to visit each other, and then move from their homes in search of a better life. However, in new places, either fellow countrymen or other people with whom they once knew each other met. In extreme cases, in conversations with new people, there were almost always common acquaintances. Since then, this concept has entered our lexicon.
Milgram experiment
The rule about the close ties of humanity is associated with the names of American psychologists Stanley Milgram and Jeffrey Travers, who in 1969 proposed the concept that has come down to us as the theory of 6 handshakes. Even 2 years before the results of the experiment were published, Milgram conducted a study whose purpose was to determine the length of the chain connecting people to each other. Calling it "Small World", the scientist developed a special algorithm designed to calculate the number of connections between two people.
Experiment progress
The sites where the Milgram experiment was carried out were the cities of Omaha and Wichita, which are located, respectively, in the states of Nebraska and Kansas. The addressee was a resident of Boston. Scientists explained their choice by the fact that, despite the small remoteness of cities from each other in terms of geography, their inhabitants were separated by a whole abyss in terms of living standards and education. 
The experiment involved randomly sending letters to residents of Omaha and Wichita inviting them to take part in a scientific experiment. In the event that they agreed, they should have written their data on the form enclosed in the letter. This letter then had to be mailed to the Boston resident whose name was on the envelope. If the addressee knew him personally, he had to forward the letter to him, and if not, then it was necessary to send the message to a person who is more likely to know him. The only condition was that the envelope should be sent only to a personally known person or relative.
Results of the experiment
The main difficulty of the study was the number of those who agreed to pass the letter on. Moreover, the failure occurred at various stages of the experiment. As a result, out of 296 letters sent with an invitation to participate, the final addressee received 64. At the same time, the length of the chain of friends averaged 5-6 people. 
It is noteworthy that many people, when choosing the next addressee, proceeded from the one who lives closer to the addressee's city, and just in this case the letter did not reach the final goal. It took 2 years to formulate the law of six handshakes, which, with the advent of the Internet, received a new meaning.
6 emails
Already at the present stage of the development of society, scientists decided to repeat the Milgram experiment using new technologies. A group of Columbia University employees sent 24,613 emails around the world. The meaning of the study was that people who received these letters had to find one of 20 addressees. Information about them was minimal: first name, last name, education, occupation, place of residence. 
The first success of the study was brought by a volunteer from Australia, who managed to find his secret addressee in Siberia with just 4 messages. Thus, the theory of 6 handshakes was confirmed for the second time, which was of interest to many sociologists.
Confirmation of the theory of 6 handshakes in social networks
In 2011, the most famous social network Facebook decided to test the rule of six handshakes. Another study was carried out jointly with the University of Milan. According to its results, the number of links in the human chain is even less than 6 and averages 4.74. Thus, an inhabitant of the planet living at one point on the globe is connected with an inhabitant of another point through "friends of friends". The only condition is registration in the global virtual community.
The following study of the reliability of the theory was conducted among users of the Russian social network VKontakte. Here the chain of friends consisted of an average of 3-4 people. Surprisingly, not a single excess of the number 6 in the human chain has been recorded. Given the territorial limitation of this virtual community, it can be argued that the results of the study also confirm the theory of 6 handshakes.
Criticism of the law 6 handshakes
Like any study, this rule has been criticized more than once, both by scientists and ordinary people. The main argument that the category of doubters referred to was that the links of the human chain were interrupted more than once in all experiments. However, in this case, the failure in the study was only due to the refusal of the participants to pass the baton.
Another argument that critics make concerns social media research. In this case, the object of doubt is the assignment to the category of acquaintances of all people who are in the list of friends of the participants. This is a rather controversial statement, but still, if someone is among the friends on your page on any social network, it means that you still have something to do with each other.
Thus, the arguments of critics who speak out against the law of 6 handshakes are not strong enough to give a serious refutation of the theory.
Truth or myth
To believe or not to the law of 6 handshakes, everyone decides for himself. However, it should be borne in mind that in the scientific world it is taken more than seriously. Moreover, scientists who advocate this theory work in a variety of fields, often far from the sociology with which it all began. One of the most striking examples of this attitude of the scientific world is the Erdős Number game, named after the Hungarian mathematician who wrote many scientific papers. The meaning of the game is that you need to find the shortest human chain that leads from any randomly selected scientist to Erdős himself. For example, a scientist is assigned the first number if he worked with the founder of the game at any time. The second number is given to the scientist who worked with the scientist who, in turn, worked with Erdős himself. It is noteworthy that most Nobel Prize winners have small numbers on this game.
By the way, this theory can be tested by anyone, and for this you do not need to be a scientist at all. All that is needed for this is to create your own “dating map”. It is desirable that the link no lower than the fourth is an acquaintance with a celebrity. The greater his popularity, the higher the probability of meeting a huge number of people, including high-ranking people, who, in turn, have no less acquaintances.
So maybe we all know each other after 6 handshakes. Due to the detailed study of all the results of experiments carried out at different times and by different methods, the popular joke about meeting the English queen no longer seems fantastic. Think about what celebrity, who up to this time seemed absolutely unattainable, you may be familiar with, according to this theory. It is likely that the result of your own research will greatly surprise you.
And Geoffrey Travers Jeffrey Travers). The hypothesis they proposed was that each person is indirectly acquainted with any other inhabitant of the planet through a chain of common acquaintances, on average, consisting of five people.
By the way, on the basis of the "small world" theory, many popular games in the USA have also arisen. For example, scientists play Erdős Number. The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős is one of the major scientists of the 20th century, having a huge number of co-authored works. You need to find the shortest chain from him to another famous scientist. If he wrote some work together with Erdős, then his Erdős number is equal to one. If in co-authorship with someone who, in turn, wrote something with Paul Erdős, then this number is two, and so on. Almost all Nobel laureates have small Erdős numbers.
In the social network VKontakte, the application ("Chain of friends - the theory of six handshakes") allows you to search for chains of acquaintances between network users. Since the audience of VKontakte is limited (Russia and the CIS countries), it is not possible to achieve the same results as described above - the chains are shorter (3-4 people). However, it is interesting that chains longer than 6 people practically do not occur, which indirectly confirms the original theory.
Perhaps the rule of "six handshakes" appeared in 1929 in the story of the Hungarian science fiction writer Fridesh Karinti "Links of the chain." Here it was proposed to prove experimentally "that the inhabitants of the Earth are now much closer to each other than ever before." It was necessary to choose any person from 1.5 billion (at that time) inhabitants of the Earth, and he, using no more than five people, each of whom is a personal acquaintance of the other, must contact any other person on Earth.
The theory is also illustrated in the films Love Actually (2003), Christmas Trees (2010), as well as in the TV series Friends (season 3, episode 16).
Also, the theory of six handshakes was mentioned in the anime: The Mysterious Library of Dantalian / Dantalian no Shoka, in the 03.seriy-Book of Wisdom at the 15th minute.
Notes
Links
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See what the "Theory of Six Handshakes" is in other dictionaries:
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Books
- The Six Handshake Theory, Craig Brown. Do you know the theory of “six handshakes”? It states that every person knows every other inhabitant of the planet through a chain of mutual acquaintances, on average, consisting of six handshakes.…