On social media it seems like everyone around me is more popular than what I am. Thankfully, as a mathematician, I know what the reason is and that it is not because of me! It is a mathematical statement: the friendship paradox!
This paradox states that your friends have on average more friends that what you do! This is rather conforting for my self image, but there is more to it. The friendship paradox can help us prevent the spreading of a disease!
But how does this exactly work? In the following animation, developed by Bruno van Wayenburg, we explain how this works!
For some additional thoughts and information on this topic you can also have a look at this article! This post is a translation of the original post (Vaccineren of concurreren) from my blog in NEMO Kennislink.
Have you ever found yourself less popular when compared to your friends? Interestingly, in any group of individuals, on average, people have fewer friends than their friends do, or at the very most, an equal number. Not more!
Since 2016 the world has been witnessing the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, in 2021 we all saw the Capitol riots on tv. What do networks have to do with these events?
An echo chamber is a community wherein the same opinions are bounced around, endlessly ‘echoing’ with barely any change. And as they do, any other opinion is shunned, pushed aside, and eventually just rejected without consideration.
Back in 2015, I joined the Movember health movement, a movement that you probably have heard of having something related to men growing a moustache. As a woman, you might imagine, I did not join for the moustache thing, but rather for the cause behind the moustache symbol, that is, raising awareness of prostate and testicular cancer.
