Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Sexual Networks

The title of this article alone is provocative:From the article:If you went to high school, you realize how complicated a high school's partnerships can be. It seems amazing that a map is possible. Having made the map, some of the findings are fascinating.

It makes you wonder if, one day, an entire city's population could be mapped, or the world's.

What if you did a world-wide map like this of every interaction that occurs between people. That is, if two people ever interact with one another, it is recorded and mapped. For example, you read this post. You and I have interacted at some level, and that is recorded and mapped. If we could make such a map, it would be interesting to know who is the most influential person on the planet. Who are the top-100 most influential people?

See also Smoking and sex.

Comments:
Two things are interesting to me about this particular study: no distinction is made between sexual and romantic relations, and there seems to be a lack of same-sex couplings. I can see only two same-sex pairs, one between two boys and one between two girls, and of those four people, only one of the boys was exclusive to same-sex. I don't know the normal figures off the top of my head, but this seems statistically anomalous to me. It could probably be explained by Ohio students being less likely to admit to same-sex involvement.
 
OMG! You totally need to watch "The L Word".
 
That is facinating. Mapping out social networks could very well be possible at some level. Especially with services like "DodgeBall" and RDIF on the horizon. DodgeBall >
 
www.dodgeball.com
 
It would be interesting to chart this at an all boys high school or a senior class that had only about 10 girls out of about 100 graduates - right, Marsh
 
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