the internet is an ocean and it feels amazing when you find a treasure.

this is an interactive lesson on graph theory.

i’ve learnt it before but never hurts to revisit and strengthen the neurons.

takeaways/notes -

  1. an euler graph can have no more than 2 odd vertices.
  2. the euler formula v + f - e = 2
  3. complete and bipartite graphs
  4. planar graphs are those that do not contain a K5 or K3,3 inside them.
  5. facebook found 3.5 average degrees of separation.

it is genuinely interesting. this figure of 3.5. makes me wonder why i don’t exploit this enough. so called “network”. linkedin surely has even lesser degrees of separation because people connect with random people there whereas in facebook, you only connect with your known friends.

linkedin must have even a lesser degree of separation which in a way doesn’t even make much sense because you can always send a connection request directly to someone. in other words you can reduce the degree of separation to anyone to 1.

now obviously its not that easy. how big of a favour someone is willing to do is inversely proportional to the degree of separation. the actual separation, not that you can connect with any stranger on linkedin then ask them to do you a big favour.

so if we look at actual degrees of separation, what reduces it is when people become more social. i don’t have the data for india but the west is becoming more lonely, which means the average degree of separation is increasing.

what can also decrease the degree is when people start having decentralized friend groups. as in if i have a closed group of 100 friends, then while it might be a lot of fun, it increases the degree. instead if i know 5 people each from 20 different groups, i’ll bring down the average degree.