Facebook's '3.74 degrees of separation' is a world away from
being significant  Data sets are fun. But it doesn't mean much
that a friend of your friends is buddies with an acquaintance of
someone else's pal     • theguardian.com,     • Jump to comments
() Facebook network On average, there are 3.74 intermediate
people in between two Facebook members. Photograph: Justin
Sullivan/Getty Images  This week Facebook announced that there
are on average just 3.74 intermediate friends separating one
user from another. They then stood back and waited for us all to
be duly amazed. Well, let's throw some numbers at the Facebook
wall and see what sticks.  A few months ago I was on Facebook
looking for a practitioner of pseudoscience whom I was in the
process of annoying with facts (it's a hobby of mine). When I
eventually found them, Facebook kindly told me that we already
had a friend in common. This came as no real surprise to me;
through my desultory use of Facebook over the years I have
somehow accrued 362 "friends".