To what degree have you met every person in the world?

[Hawklet]

If one degree = a friend that you know, and 2 degrees = a person your friend has met, and 3 degrees = a person who has met the person who has met your friend.....How many degrees do you think it would take for you to have met every single living person in the world?

[bottomset]

a lot, though it does get exponential very fast, it is still going 1 to 6+billion, and there will be a lot of overlap in each degree

[XXXNoahXXX]

I think there a still a couple indigenous tribes out there that might ruin this. I'm sure most if not all have had contact with outsiders at one point or another, but there is probably a couple exceptions.

[Josem]

i estimate that over my life, i have met at least 20,000 people (i worked as president of a university student union; i have handed out how to vote cards, to 2,000 people, at least five times)

While, obviously the vast majority of those 20,000 are Australians, many of them were also international university students. I would estimate, fairly conservatively, that each of those people knows a further 1,000, after you account for overlap.

That's already 20,000,000, from across the globe - and on top of that, 43% of Australians have at least one parent born overseas, so there's a fair degree of interconnectedness.

100 more for the 3rd degree = 200,000,000

100 more for the 4th degree = many times over for 6billion

and add in the 5th degree for some isolated groups, and I reckon i'd be there.

[luckyjimm]

I wonder which living person has met the most people. By "meet" I mean been introduced, at least exchanged a few lines. I think it has to be the Queen, just pipping Bill Clinton because of her age. Nelson Mandela has met a lot of folk too, but he was out of action for a long time!

[[Phill]]

Two questions:

1, How do you define the degree? Can it be a person i see, or do i have to exchange words? Do i have to know their name?
2, Are we including remote tribes of people who have no contact with the outside world?

If 2 is a no, and the definition of a degree is loose (so i have to simply speak to them or hear them say something) then its 5 or 6 i think.

If its extremely loose, like seeing the person on the street, then id imagine it would be 3, possibly 4 at most.

If i have to know them (name alone would do it), and they have to know the next person then id imagine it would be more than 7.

[MikalSjekson]

the answer is 5 if i'm not mistaken. There was an article about this.

[adrockuk]

another question, can you pass through dead people... so you could skip up and down generations? This would make sure all the remote tribes could definitely be included.

Or do all the people in the link have to be alive, I think something I read about this idea included the notion of being able to a get a favour off a friend of a friend of a friend etc...

[codewarrior]

The correct answer is six.

Linkage

[Dan.]

Well, if I've slept with everyone my partner has...