17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
From: pcw@access.digex.net (Peter Wayner)
Especially given that urban folklore about everyone being only 5 hops away on the network of life. I.e. Everyone is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of anyone else.
The factoid I heard was that if we're randomly chosen people, there a ~99% chance that I have a friend who has a friend who's your friend. Dropping one hop, to require us to have a friend in common, reduces the probability to something very small. Eli ebrandt@hmc.edu But I probably heard this from a FOAF.