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Reader comments
ScottFeb 17, 2004 at 12:11AM
Very cool. But I feel sorry for the four people at the far left who don't seem to have friends in high school.
bobFeb 17, 2004 at 5:30PM
well, i wouldn't say I was one of those four exactly. close though. no, i'm probably that one red guy on the far far right. :(
donald tettoFeb 18, 2004 at 12:33AM
What gets me thinking about the high school one is that so many of the connections are uni-directional arrows. I wonder whether that indicates that perhaps X listed Y as a friend but Y did not list X. The sheer rareness of bidirectional relationships kind of casts that in doubt -- but what else might the arrows mean? This would be interesting, though, because it would indicate those guys on the far far right thought they had no friends although others reported liking them. And all of them could use a key. What do those colors represent, anyway?
nateFeb 18, 2004 at 12:40AM
donald: maybe the students rated each other on a scale, and the arrow indicates the direction of the hierarchy. so if i thought you were a 8, and you thought i were a 10 (and i am), the arrow would point to me.
then again, maybe that doesn't really work after all...
what weirded me out was the high school dating graph. i don't know about you, but i'd doubt the existence of a homogeneously heterosexual high school. (hey, alliteration!)
donald tettoFeb 18, 2004 at 8:50PM
When I was in high school (suburban NJ), I recall no openly gay couples. I imagine, for instance, in many areas in the midwest that this would be even less so. Maybe the high school is not homogeneously heterosexual, but it's gay population might be homogeneously repressed.
The other consideration is that there merely were no bisexual students. Solely homosexual students would date only within their own, seperate networks -- and those secondary networks seem to have been entirely discounted from this graph (notably absent: monogamous couples, those who did not date at all).
Assuming the very few bidirectional relationships they have going on the friends chart are even ties, your theory on a rating scale seem to me as good an explanation as any.
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.