Of Friends, Face-to-Face and Virtual

Always love to see math making it into the popular or mainstream press, so nice to see this Maria Konnikova article on Dunbar's Number and social networks (and the new ramifications of digital social media) in the New Yorker:

http://tinyurl.com/mx4qgmx

As the article states, "...no one really knows how relevant the Dunbar number will remain in a world increasingly dominated by virtual interactions," or as Dunbar himself is quoted, “We haven’t yet seen an entire generation that’s grown up with things like Facebook go through adulthood yet.”

There are potential neuroscience, and in turn social, implications to all this reliance on virtual interaction. It is, for now, a sort of grand, ongoing experiment, outcome unknown.

Devlin, Dunbar, Dominoes...

1) Registration for the second run of Keith Devlin's Stanford MOOC course, "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" is underway (course beginning Mar. 4 for 10 weeks). More details here (where it states, "The goal of the course is to help you develop a valuable mental ability – a powerful way of thinking that our ancestors have developed over three thousand years").:

https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

I've previously (highly) recommended the 92-page book Keith authored for this course (same title as course), but it would be incomparably better if read in conjunction with the course itself, than on its own.  I've not taken the course myself, but sincerely hope that some readers here do imbibe in Dr. Devlin's offering (and maybe even report back to us!?). There is very little computational math involved, but the ideas/work required for completion still may not be easy (depending on your background).

2) I wrote about the so-called "Dunbar number" here last year (the notion that neurological constraints limit one's close friendships or interpersonal relationships to very roughly 150 people). Now a much longer general article on Dr. Dunbar and his illustrious number:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks#p1

3) A recent nice little tutorial on the number e and ln here:

http://tinyurl.com/bnpfle6

 4) And lastly... how to knock over the Empire State Building with dominoes… and a little physics (a short, fun, but also educational, video):

You Have 742 Friends on Facebook…

(via WikimediaCommons)

 uhh, yeahhh… rr-r-r-right!?

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued some years back that due to constraints of the primate neocortex the number of "friends" or 'stable inter-personal relationships that can be maintained' by an individual is somewhere in the neighborhood of 150, which became known as "Dunbar's Number." Some felt Dunbar was on the mark (perhaps even too high in his estimate) while others have felt that his idea is outmoded or irrelevant in the new digital world of extended human relationships or 'social networking.'

A good, older article (that leads to more links) on the subject here:

http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

and a more recent, less technical piece, by Greg Laden here:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/06/10/what-is-dunbars-number/

...but I'd actually be tempted to start with these 2 entertaining pieces:

From NPR (employing the company Gore-Tex as an example) here:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends

and a funny 'experimental' take on the topic below:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/dunbars-number-facebook/ 


....Now, if you would all just be so kind as to favorite this post to your 1150 Twitter and Facebook friends.