The Physics of Friendship

Santosh Maharshi wrote to mention a Physorg story about a new way to model social networks. From the article: "Applying a mathematical model to the social dynamics of people presents difficulties not involved with more physical - and perhaps more rational - applications. The many factors that influence an individual's fate to meet an acquaintance and decide to become a friend are impossible to capture, but physicists have used techniques from physical systems to model social networks with near precision. By modeling people's interactions based on how particles bounce off each other in an enclosed area, physicists Marta Gonzalez, Pedro Lind and Hans Herrmann found that the characteristics of social networks emerge 'in a very natural way.'"

So in other words...

[moochfish]

When you can't figure out why you have no friends, you hole yourself up in the basement for 3 years and come out with an equation that explains your shell of a social life. ;D

emerge 'in a very natural way.'

[slashflood]

Calculating dependencies
emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "in a very natural way.".

Unfortunately

[RootsLINUX]

Unfortunately for the scientists responsible for the discovery, they still can't seem to get a hot date on Friday nights. :(

The article's illustration.

[babbling]

See that picture at the top of the article? The big cloud with lots of fuzzy stuff in the middle, and then a less populated border?

Most of us were probably the border in high school...

heh

[narkotix]

still not as good as this [earthlink.net] equation.

Re:What are the applications?

[mattjb0010]

"Hey baby, wanna bounce off me in an enclosed area?"

Re:The article's illustration.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a picture in TFA?! Then I definitly must "read" it...

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...welcome our new cloudy diagrams overlords.

Geeks are smart but when it comes to this stuff

[elucido]

It's as if they get retarded real quick. It's complicated, but if you want to make a science out of it, it's very stupid to focus on the "physics" of friendship. This is like focising on the "shape" of love, or the weight of emotion. Well okay, it does make sense to focus on these things, but why focus on these things?

If your goal is to find dates, then the first rule, BE HONEST. A woman can smell a liar, and women gossip, so anything you do will spread around town. You want the gossip to go in your favor, you want the legions of women to highlight how good you were in bed, or how nice you treat them, so that news spreads around town and you become a teenage or college legend. You don't want to be the town player, who gets drunk and beats women, or who cheats on women constantly, you don't want to be that guy. Geeks must learn to create the Geek image. We need a Geek 2.0, and it's your job as slashdot geeks to create the Geek 2.0 image. Do your research, figure out how women think and what they want, then come up with a set of guidelines and rules that all Geeks should follow, complete with dress code and language.

So could one use plasma plasma physics

[Anonymous Coward]

...to describe a riot?

Re:Geeks are smart but when it comes to this stuff

[zippthorne]

"or who cheats on women constantly,"

Ok, but your rep can't be hurting you too much if you have plenty of women with which to cheat on the other ones.

Re:Geeks are smart but when it comes to this stuff

[Hal_Porter]

no, READ the ROADMAP. I'm sick of reading posts like this.

human social interaction v 1.0 will be in Geek 2.1.0.4.5. Not 2.0.

people like you who can't be bothered to make any effort installing CVS (make SURE you use cvs-unstable-12-Mar-2006-0435am or later or your machine WILL be DESTROYED. DO NOT POST HERE COMPLAINING IF THIS HAPPENS!!!) and setting up a local CVS branch and pulling the latest unstable-tainted roadmap aren't worth talking to.

So, you mean.....

[killeena]

....having the creator of a social networking site add himself to everyone's friend's list isn't the way to create a social network?

I resent that...

[Savage-Rabbit]

When you can't figure out why you have no friends, you hole yourself up in the basement for 3 years and come out with an equation that explains your shell of a social life. ;D

You have misunderstood this completely. It is not an effort to explain the shell that is a Nerd's social life, this is already a well understood phenomenon. This research is part of an ongoing effort to find a sientifically sound solution to the tricky problem of enabling a Nerd to find a girlfriend. If you can't understand human females and their social behavior instinctively, analyze them mathematically until you do. Of course it might take a few more decades before we have quantum computers powerful enough to handle this daunting analytical task but until then basic mathematical research like this is vital.

Looking to Quantum Particles

[Anonymous Coward]

Her: up, charm, top

You: down, strange, bottom

Not mentioned in the article

[jurt1235]

The model also produced a single integer as result: 42

Since the scientists could not explain the result, they decided to ignore it for now. One of the scientist was willing to give an anonymous comment:
For me it could have been 41 or 43 as result, but I can live with 42
Asking for further explanation, he denied further comments.

High School Physics

[Centurix]

I can clearly state that high school consisted of various mixed states of matter. Most good looking girls were made of highly organised chrystalline structures, very rigid, but could be reduced to a liquid state with the correct application of energy. Some girls were a good solid. Some girls were perfect examples of Brownian motion, all over the place.

On a quantum level, you were better off dating the larger Bosons, as they were always friends with the best looking low mass Photons, even though you had to put up with the odd crazy bit of anti-matter sometimes, getting into the mix of things can certainly help out generating loads of Super-Fluids...

Re:I resent that...

[MooUK]

One of my favourite sayings: "As well try to understand a woman as to understand the sun".

Of course, that saying was set back when they didn't have a clue about the sun. Now we mostly understand how it works, and yet women are still a complete mystery!

(Oh, and it's not just us guys who can't understand girls. A large number of my female friends agree that girls can't understand each other either!)