Six Degrees of Separation

How's it going guys? Hope you've had a nice week. Before stepping out in our main post just let me give you my update about the last one, our new favorite equation!!!… Did you try it to hit the the calculator? What's your lucky number? Well… all I'm gonna say mine is… 11.

Ok, moving on. Now let's take it old school… social networks. What? Another one of those? Like if you haven't heard enough from them already, nowadays they're flooded with information, communication, pictures, groups, links… man, is quite easy to have a headache from all of it. And funny enough, these internet networks are in diapers. Take note that I started the paragraph with 'old school'… what's so old about it? Well… let me play interesting for now and tell you about the very first (and original, I might add) social network.

Remember the days without a computer? Hard to believe? Even in those days people had their own 'social network', and sometimes they didn't know about it. I like to call this network as the 'Six degrees of separation' experiment. I know you might heard about it, and you may ask yourself… "Wait a minute, that's not a social network, get your sources together!" Just keep reading.

It turns out that "Six Degrees of Separation" (SDoS) is a theory suggesting that every single person on the planet is somehow 'connected' to any other person you can think of through six other people max. Let me put it this way… if you are a facebook user then you can be 'connected' with any other user through six (or less) other users who make a chain of friends out of themselves. This was first proposed in 1929 by Frigyes Karinthy (I told you it was old school!). It sounds like a nice coincidence, but… it is true?

If you explore this on the web, you're gonna find a lot of experiments. People from the MIT, IBM, sociologist, playwrights, all have done their own little experiments. I personally like one involving the postal service, where some random senders only know the recipient's name, occupation and general location. Their task was to make sure the package was delivered to the target via people they thought were most likely in touch with the recipient (their friends or family). All these experiments results are quite striking, since the average number of 'links' needed between persons was, indeed… 6… but why 6? Is some sort of magical number? Maybe. Does it mean anything? Maybe not. Anyway, experiments and research are in still in the works and maybe, sometime, we'll be able to know if this theory carries some sort of deeper meaning.

Can you imagine being potentially in touch with EVERYONE? And I mean EVERYONE. Every person you see on the streets, TV, movies, radio, people from China, Ethiopia, Sweden… wow… my mind explodes! You can do your own experiment on the web, just look your facebook friends or people following you on twitter. Even Hollywood took noticed of it and there's a movie with that very title (Will Smith's on it). Here's the trailer of the movie if you fancy watching it.

Honestly I think anything is possible, but if we wanna make contact with the one person first we gotta find the right six people to make the connection.

Drake's Tweaked Equation

What? Are we turning this space into a Math class? Naahhh… I know it sounds like it, but bare with me for the next couple of lines to find out something truly amazing it may help you BIG TIME! Everything started like a couple of weeks ago having a chat with a friend of mine (@Padaguan) when he talked to me about a guy in the UK named Peter Backus from the University of Warwick who did something it may not get a Nobel prize for, but I'm sure many people are gonna love him for it (and in my opinion that's wicked!). All begins with the title of this post… obviously we're not going to mess with the numbers, all we need to know is that the untweaked equation was once written back in '62 by… (guess who?) Dr. Drake, and it helps to measure the possibility of finding life in other planets… plain and simple.

Ok… fair enough… so what? How this bunch of numbers are gonna help us in any way? Alright… here it goes, while scientists are using this equation to estimate the existence of intelligent life outside our world… this english fella tweaked it in order to… (drum role!) measure the number of compatible ladies and potential girlfriends for him. And it gets better, it doesn't limit to "find" them around the world… but in his own town instead!

How is this possible? Well, now we're stepping in the line between abstraction and practicality. Here's how it works, while the original formula takes into consideration other aspects, the ones we're going to see are some sort of adaptations of your own likings (i.e. if you want your girlfriend to have a major or being over certain age). So, we have to make up our minds and choose how we want out mate to be. After we have that sorted out we need to know certain things regarding our town's population (like percentage of genders and such).

Alright… good so far? I saw the formula and in total it takes 8 different aspects, which (easy enough) all we have to do is to multiply them with our trusty calculator and violá!!! To cheer you up, our new best friend from UK got a pretty solid answer… 26… YESSSS!!! 26 is the number of girls from London he may have a wonderful relationship with (in his own words). You hated numbers? Not now! I have to say that's a pretty nice adaptation we can all use. My friend @Padaguan did the math for his case and his new lucky number is 14. That's the number of compatible girls walking the hallways and hanging out in his university waiting to be found! (That's right! He narrowed it that down!)

What are you waiting for? Grab a calculator and hit those buttons! Your perfect match can be just around the corner just waiting for you (or for any other compatible one). I hand you the link listing the aspects you need to work its magic and also I leave a small vid so you can meet the author of the original equation himself: Dr. Frank Drake (you gotta bow to him!) I'm about to hit the calculator myself, I'll let you know my numbers in the next post.

Here's the link

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/phd_students/backus/girlfriend/why_i_dont_have_a_girlfriend.pdf

The Butterfly Effect

Have you ever heard the term? Or the movie? (Kinda cool if you ask me). Have you ever wondered how come are you living your life exactly the way it is? Did you plan it just the way you wanted it or as most people say: "One thing led to another…". I don't want to burst anyone's bubble if they argue with me by saying: "Dude, I planned all my life and I'm living it exactly as I want it. You have no idea what I've been through to achieve it". But the thing is, as much control as we have over our lives, we just don't control all around it. These are mere examples of this so-called metaphor that we all may be immerse in.

To be in the same page, the butterfly effect is a metaphor dealing with a theory called the "Chaos Theory" (long story short, mini-tiny differences in the beginning of anything causes extremely big differences at the end of things). The metaphor describes a butterfly (captain obvious!) flying around, and with this movement may unchain a change in the weather of a place very far away (much like rain or anything like it). Sounds like a very weird example, but it helped me to understand how apparently despicable details may matter for any outcome we can think of.

But how this weird metaphor applies to our actual lives? Is it practical? My very personal answer is.. by all means YES! Just think of any recent day you've had. Make a list of things you wanted to do but for any weird/silly/unknown reason you either delayed or postponed them, maybe you met someone or your internet was down or ran out of gas… well, let's say those things are your butterflies! And you doing things or not is your "weather". Now we're getting somewhere! I know it sounds very out-there, but I think is very believable. I mean, imagine how you met your best friend, or how you ended up stuck in a meeting… or simply, how did your meet your boyfriend/girlfriend… those butterflies are everywhere!

Any science involved here? Believe it or not, yes. There are tons of things on the web, examples, experiences and if you're brave enough, even mathematical definitions and some real studies. If you spare a minute or two, you can surprise yourself. I even noticed this theory on the media, I bet you're begging to hear about the movie, I will say that it sets nicely the effects of people acts and their own future getting affected, but steering aside from THAT movie (I mean, the title itself is revealing enough) I like to think in this other movie… "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (minor spoiler alert!), somewhere in the middle of the movie a narrator explains us how a series of mundane events seemingly unrelated lead to a sad outcome (just like one of those series of cartoonish mechanisms involving a ball going around and activating all kinds of scales, strings and weights). If only one event is missed, then the outcome would be totally different.

So, next time you're doing something you actually want, think if any butterflies are preventing to mess up with your weather! What's your story? Leave a comment if you've lived anything like it. Is always nice to think people are going through same things we are! I leave a small background video if you want to know a bit more about this metaphor. See you next weekend!

Cosmos

Last week I went to  a DVD store and I saw on the shelf a 4 DVD pack of a mid 80's miniseries written by Carl Sagan called Cosmos. I remember seeing an episode or two when I was in junior high and it caught my eye right away. Just yesterday, 10 years later, I watched the first episode and luckily it answered the very first question that I had regarding the miniseries… what in the world is Cosmos? And believe me when I tell you, I loved the answer. Cosmos is all there is, all that ever was or ever will be. Gosh! If I knew that when answering a quiz… every time I would've responded… Cosmos!

This miniseries explores and narrates, with clear analogies and comparisons, different fundamental questions about the human life… how did we evolve? How the world was created?… anyway, sort of geeky-general questions that actually I'm eager to know the answers to. Obviously I'm not going to review it, since I've seen only a couple of episodes, for a change I'll try to tell you my first impressions on this "personal voyage" as the intro states.

First of all, this is not led to a brainy/scientific audience, here you won't find any mathematical explanations, complicated terms or a boring, heartless host. Carl Sagan has managed to communicate, with incredible easy examples, some of the most fascinating and creative answers for the rest of us. This collection of episodes are not glued with high-level explanations, but with, for a lack of a better word, love (?). Corny as it sounds, it is true. And that was the first thing I noticed, while waiting for a complicated moment I was welcomed with analogies that I, a mere mortal, could understood as crystal as water (in a non-smoke free environment, of course). You can tell Sagan was fascinated with every word he said, and most of all, you believe his words.

Just thought of another great approach I realized… when people hear "Cosmos" (and if they see the DVD cover) they'll definitely categorize this miniseries as an universe/galaxy/world movie. Well… can't blame that, since we just heard that ALL there is is Cosmos… but that conception can't differ more from the truth. Here you will hear things as big as the "Big Bang Theory" (no, you won't find Penny here… sadly) or as small as a bird. Mundane things like a city or a war are addressed, so you're in for a treat in every new episode you watch. Nicely attached in some episodes are small entries recorded 10 years after the main piece where Sagan updates some info regarding that particular episode.

I know it's been a while since Cosmos was released, so you won't find HD, widescreen or other fancy features, and some effects may seemed outdated (not a fault by any means), but in return you'll find a great piece of human heritage courtesy of a true character as Carl Sagan at his finest. Since the price tag is extremely low (150 MXN for over 750 min of film in 4 DVDs) and for the quality of the information I definitely recommend you give this a buy and believe me, you hardly will find a better deal than this one. As usual, I leave you with a small video review (well, is like 27min long, but watch just a couple of minutes) so you can have a great preview of this sublime voyage.