h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Perhaps we could add cross-links here to my entry on "Digital Codes"?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A533170

It contains all of three paragraphs on PGP-style encryption - so linking from there to here would really add to my entry, I think!

Good idea, Lucinda.

Do you remember when we thought about making this one and yours about digital codes a joint venture?

And when we decided not to do it becuase mine had been recommended already?

Times pass ...........

Jeremy

yep - it seems my entry overtook yours in the process...

But I think it was probably better as two seperate entries - yours deals with the specifics of PGP, whereas mine was very much broad brush - so they're complimentary!

Consider it lunk.

and the reverse linkette?

You are SOOOOOOOOO demanding!

But I've done it anyway.

*cracks whip*

Cheers!

Its a bit of a non serious diversion from the topic but ive read somewhere that nobody in the uk is more than 4 people away from the Queen, ie everybody has met somebody who has met someone else who has met someone else who has met someone who has met her...is this mathematically feasible, given that there are around 55mllion people in the uk?She >>does<< meet a lot of folk...!!
Just thought id throw that in....
regards
JTL

I have read similar things in a much more 'global' scale. You just have to go "up the tree" and "down the tree". Example: I happen to know our mayor (it's a rather small town). He knows our 'Minister President' (~~comparable to a governor in the US). The 'MP' knows our Chancellor (~~'Prime Minister' in the UK, sorry for mixing some of the states and government for the example, I hope you get the point.)

Our chancellor knows (or at least should know) most of the head-of-states, prime ministers, kings, queens, ... all over the world.

Let's continue the example: The German Chancellor knows the US President. The President knows all State Governors. A state governor knows all City Mayors. City Mayors know many of their citizens (is that true?). So the chain from me to any US Citizen should not be longer than, let's say, 7 to 8 links.

Let's do some very crude calculating: You said there are 55,000,000 people in the UK. I think the queen had her 75th birthday recently (?), which means she was born some 27,500 days ago. She has a rather busy schedule, so let's assume that she meets an average of 20 ~new~ people a day (I have absolutley no evidence for that number, it's mere assumption, so feel free to play around with other numbers).

This would mean that she has 'met' some 550,000 people in her life.

Let's assume that only half of them were UK citizens. THis cuts the number down to 275,000 people, which is 1 out of every 200 UK citizens.

How many people do you know? More than 200? I guess so. This means that you may have met someone who has met the queen already. If you include another one or two links into the chain, the probability would be almost infinite .

I do realize that these calculations are not based on any facts, they are very crude and inaccurate. But I think they show that a chain length of 4 is absolutely feasible mathematically.

Jeremy

I seem to recall somewhere that the value for any country is supposed to be 5. i.e. you are at most 5 links away from any other person in the same country.

On another thread recently we've been briefly discussing the size of the Internet and apparently it has been recently calculated that any two sites are at most 12 clicks apart.