Sublime

average network size was around 125, with a distinct ∩-shape against age: networks initially increase in size as we age, reach a peak between the mid-twenties and early thirties and then decline steadily into old age

people you know by name (1,500).

located two Facebook datasets, one small and one large (and, no, they didn’t get either of them from Cambridge Analytica . . . both are publicly available), and downloaded a large sample of Twitter traffic (if you know how to do this, it is easy to do and, because Twitter is publicly accessible, it is perfectly legal).

So Dunbar proposed a novel idea: the size of a species’ brain determines the optimal size of their social groups. Maintaining relationships, argued Dunbar, requires brain power. More relationships require more neurons. Extrapolating his straight line from primate brains to human brains, he found that the optimal human group size, if this hypothesis

scaling ratio of 3.3.

50-layer as your party friends:

Amazingly, the algorithm needed a set of only ten Likes in order to outperform the predictions of work colleagues.

1,500-layer is the number of faces you can put names to