Shimjockey

We can think of ourselves as insignificant, but “AU Contraire, Mon Soeur et Frere”, it really is quite the opposite. We are ALL very important, so don’t fool around with thinking otherwise! I’m sure you’re aware of the “Six Degrees of Separation” philosophy, but in case not, I will try and explain it in my own special way. The original thought was known to have come from Frigyes Karinthy, a Hungarian author, poet and playright, at least that’s a few of the hats the gent wore. He surmised that the human race could all be connected by 5 contact points. He lived from 1887 to 1938, so his premise has been kicked around a lot since then.

But he… Nailed it!

While it may have become a popular game using the actor Kevin Bacon as a connection to most, if not all of the current actors of his day in film, plays or commercials, it has some quite fascinating thoughts about it we can all take pleasure in! While I ponder,  how in the “Wide World Of Sports” could I have any piece of this action, the chain of connection starts it’s own action.I’m actually thinking of it as a fabric of contact points that keep lighting up. Anytime now you can start humming the song by Michael Jackson,

“We are the World”!

I think about my own friendships and brief meetings with different people that live a way more interesting life than my own, that’s how it starts! I mean, that’s how you get your foot in the door! You could say we of the “Less Influential” are connecting the world playing piggyback on shoulders of the jet set, but it may be far more simple then that. I have worked with Russian, Ukrainian, Mexican, Honduran, Canadian, African and Native Indian people. Though the friendships may have been brief  and superficial,… They All Count!

Does that get Your Gears Turning?

It does Mine! While I have some doubts, connecting with the indigenous people of say anywhere  the Amazon Jungle is concerned, but even a place like Borneo is open for thought. That’s not our problem though, we’re in the mix, that’s the main point! I’m getting those old “Warm Fuzzies” already!

Now what do we do with this information, You might Wonder? I’m working on that question as I write! For starters though, I think stepping outside your normal routine and interacting with someone you might have noticed, who seems to be all alone, might be one idea. Accepting the fact that you are connected to the whole “Human Race” with all the excitement that might  instill! We’ve become this huge blanket that surrounds the Whole Dog Gone ……

Planet!

I’m Jacked about that fact!

Now there’s some math in all of this and I have decided to permit the experts to share some of their findings to give this more Pizzaz!!

Mathematics

Mathematicians use an analogous notion of collaboration distance:^[26] two persons are linked if they are coauthors of an article. The collaboration distance with mathematician Paul Erdős is called the Erdős number. Erdős-Bacon numbers are a further extension of the same thinking. Watts and Strogatz showed that: Average Path Length = (ln N / ln K) where N = total nodes and K = acquaintances per node. Thus if N = 300,000,000 (90% US pop.) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 19.5 / 3.4 = 5.7 and if N = 6,000,000,000 (90% World pop.) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 22.5 / 3.4 = 6.6. (Assume 10% of population is too young to participate.)

And if that didn’t get your Jets all fired up, maybe this will?

Definition

If Alice collaborates with Paul Erdős on one paper, and with Bob on another, but Bob never collaborates with Erdős himself, then Bob is given an Erdős number of 2, as he is two steps from Erdős.

To be assigned an Erdős number, an author must co-write a research paper with an author with a finite Erdős number. Paul Erdős has an Erdős number of zero. Anybody else’s Erdős number is k + 1 where k is the lowest Erdős number of any coauthor.

Erdős wrote around 1,500 mathematical articles in his lifetime, mostly co-written. He had 511 direct collaborators;^[3] these are the people with Erdős number 1. The people who have collaborated with them (but not with Erdős himself) have an Erdős number of 2 (9267 people as of 2010^[4]), those who have collaborated with people who have an Erdős number of 2 (but not with Erdős or anyone with an Erdős number of 1) have an Erdős number of 3, and so forth. A person with no such coauthorship chain connecting to Erdős has an Erdős number ofinfinity (or an undefined one).

There is room for ambiguity over what constitutes a link between two authors; the Erdős Number Project web site says:

“(…) Our criterion for inclusion of an edge between vertices u and v is some research collaboration between them resulting in a published work. Any number of additional co-authors is permitted, (…)”

but they do not include non-research publications such as elementary textbooks, joint editorships, obituaries, and the like. The “Erdős number of the second kind” restricts assignment of Erdős numbers to papers with only two collaborators.^[5]

The Erdős number was most likely first defined in print by Casper Goffman, an analyst whose own Erdős number is 1.^[6] Goffman published his observations about Erdős’ prolific collaboration in a 1969 article entitled “And what is your Erdős number?“^[7]

So what are they talking about? I think it’s the shrinking of our world, and it’s been caused by a number of things. How our communities are shaped into Hoods is one way, our social net-working is another and to keep it all changing everyday could possibly be our computer age of technology,  which has delivered to us sites like Facebook and Twitter. My first connections with friends I haven’t seen for 40 some years was through a site called “Classmates”.  Some people you knew back in high school you just as soon not want to have any contact with, but for me it’s been one of the greatest thrills!

My thought about what makes us so important to one another is, we are part of something so big it’s beyond our human understanding to conceive of, We are a major part of Creation!  Where all of that takes us is another very exciting part of the fact that You and I are going there together. It’s also another blog in the making, but………… It’s a bit like boarding a jumbo jet ,

 

Taking Off For……

 

 

 

PARTS UNKNOWN!!

 

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