Do you believe we are all a few people away from knowing everyone on Earth?

Have you ever had a question related to a specific place on Earth and wondered if you know someone there to give you an answer?!!

I think you may know someone or maybe all the people there, that’s according to a theory that I previously heard about. The theory states that we are all only about seven people away from knowing everyone in the world.

Really, I believe in that. Rather, it could be only one person required in order to know everyone in the world through.

It’s like any transportation network, where people are nodes connected to others through different links. The more the people you know the more the linkage you have to the world network which means that you may find a shorter path to reach someone else on the far side of the Earth.

Do you think so?!!

Let's validate this theory by joining and inviting all of your friends to join the Facebook group in the link below and hence you will be linked to everyone who has a Facebook account in the world.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=41225564794

Does the number of people that you know matters?

I think it doesn’t matter how many people you should know in order to be linked to everyone in the world, as this number will only affect how fast you are going to reach those people occupying the far side of Earth. Further, I believe it could be only one person required in order to know everyone in the world through, but it will take much more time than knowing five or seven persons as a start.

But if that’s the case, a constraint should be added ensuring that every single person on Earth has to know at least another one in order to avoid the creation of closed loops and hence leaving some people without a link with others.

You can look at the situation as simple as what we are doing right now, we are all linked together through our Facebook accounts and anyone who doesn’t has a Facebook account will not be able to be linked with us!! So, just switch “Facebook account(s)” with “Friend(s)” and you will get what I mean.

Anyways these are just some thoughts, so let’s validate this theory by joining and inviting others to join the Facebook group mentioned above as I think the Facebook users could be considered as a representative sample of the world! And maybe we can prove this theory by doing some hypothesis testing after that.

Also, please let me know if you have any references regarding this theory in order to be mentioned.

Regarding naming this theory, I don’t know yet and it will be appreciable if anyone let me know any suggestions regarding that. Who knows maybe I’ll invite you on a cup of coffee one day :-D