Gut feel is no indicator

However rational we are, there is always the little voice of our gut feel.  Typically its the result of experience and it leads us to make good choices.  Sometimes, often when we have had no way to experience something it can mislead us.

Here are two, trivial but illustrative, examples where the results surprise us, indicating that our natural gut feel is wrong.  Both relate to assessing what reach is possible for a word of mouth message

• Just how interconnected are we?
• How the maths works - technically multiplicative expansion

Interconnectivity

WARNING before you try this, it is adictive.

The 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon - The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

Type in the name of any film actor, however obscure, and this tool will find how to link them to Kevin Bacon. I could not find an actor with a Bacon Number (distance from Mr Bacon) with more than 2 - I tried Bruce Lee, Charles Chaplin, Chow Yuan Fat and many others. Let me know if you find a 3 or a 4.

Challenge - I'll send (via The Grotto) a bottle of Champaign the 1st first person to find 5 or a 6

Interconnectivity

1967, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram did the seminal study from which he proposed that we can all be connected by just six links. Back in those days this had to be done by snail mail. This study has been re-run (by Columbia University's dept of sociology) using email and hence at much larger scale (over 60,000 people participated) A full description can be found here

The results as published in "Science" are amazing.

(just noticed you have to register (for free) to read the article)

In summary

• 61,168 people took part - making it statistically solid
• they were asked to get a message to 18 selected targets spread over 13 countries(a professor at an Ivy League university, an archival inspector in Estonia, a technology consultant in India, a policeman in Australia, and a veterinarian in the Norwegian army)
• they created 24,163 chains
• 384 messages were successfully delivered to the targets
• It took approx 4 links to get the messages to the targets in the successful chains
• Adjusted to a real word scenario this equates to a chain length of approx 7
• All the 18 target people received their messages showing their location did not matter

Multiplicative expansion

Simple question - if you fold a piece of paper in half 50 times, how thick will it become? Dont sneak a look and simply choose the answer based on your gut feel

1. as thick a telephone book
2. as tall as a refrigerator
3. as tall as the empire state building
4. as tall as from the earth to the moon
5. as tall as from the earth to the sun

scroll down for the answer

The answer:
5. Here to the sun - even when we know the answer, it feels amazing, showing that in general we underestimate the end result of one person telling 2 who tell 2 who tell 2 ...