During the research of facebook, professor found that a user has an average of 190 friends but their friends have an average of 635 friends.
Maybe you would be a litter disappointed about the result. You spend plenty of your time on facebook. Every day you update your state and upload some photos or share some interesting things with your friends. You try to make friend online and maintain the friendship. Unfortunately, even though you have done so much, your friends are still less than your friends' friends.The same tendency was also found in offline social network.
However, we don't need to worry about it because the result is a statistic result, which has nothing to do with the personal character. The average number of your friends' friends are always more than yours. This phenomenon was called friends paradox.
Now I will try to explain the phenomenon. When you walk into a gym you may found everyone in the gym looks like this:
You may found that nearly everyone is stronger than you. But don't be shame of it. Because if you don't have ardent love for gym the result is right equals to expectation. Why? Because you didn't count in the person who stay at home.The people in gym doesn't represent the average level.
This also explain why people always think the congestion of airport, beach and other place are bad than the statistic average. Because when this places are empty, there exist no one to witness the moment.
Let use a small social network modle to explain it.
Abby, Becca, Chloe and Deb are four students and the edges between means the friendship. For Abby, she has one friends and Becca has three. We can easy calculate the average friends number is 8/4=2.
Now let calculate the average friends number of your firends.
For Abby, her friends Becca has 3 friends.
For Chloe, her firends Becca has 3 friends and her friends Deb has two friends.
.
.
.
.
At last ,we calculate the result is 2.25, a litter higher than 2.
Why this
phenomenon happen? Because the person like Becca contribution more to the result. Her contribution is more than liner. Becca has been mentioned for three times so her contribution is 3X3.
That's why our friends' friends are always more than our's. Our friends' scores are square after the weighted average' and it would be bigger than our score without square.
It's an interesting article!
回复删除You put out a question that why do we think of our friends are less than our friends' friends in social networks and then explain it quite well. The example of the gym and airport and the last analysis of the four people relationship help me to recognize the answer.
And you put the idea that some people's contribution in social networks is higher than others. It's quite fair with your figure.
Thank you for sharing such interesting phenomenon and explanation in detail!
Thanks for your appreciate!
删除Last week I found every try to discuss "Social Network Analysis" so I turn my topic to some interesting phenomenon in our social network because I really meet the situation when I walk into the gym in Cuhk .
The explanation make me feel better because the theory tell me that's not my problem.
Agree with your point. Every possible behaviors on-line are all closely related to psychology theory or behavioral science. The example you post in this blog is helpful to show the essence behind the on-line interaction.
回复删除It's a very interesting topic to give an answer to the question why the average number of our friends' friends are always more than ours own. Sometimes statistic figures are just very confusing and need to be interpreted so that it can show something more meaningful for the guys without statistical background.
回复删除quite interesting topic "friend paradox", i have never thought this before, even the phenomenon "our friends' friends are always more than ours own"...thanks for sharing..
回复删除Interesting theory and this paradox really makes me a little confused... I have to think more to understand this and thanks to your article I will not feel shame when I get low score in the exam next time, because many people who are really not good at exam never enter the college :-)
回复删除Actually I used to think about this question.. but did not analyze to find more detailed answer. Thanks for you theory and explanation.
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