3 ms·

The Friendship Paradox

27 points by chirau 5y ago

derbOac 5y ago
Would this in general be true of any attribute that is significantly skewed? I.e., if you remove someone at random from a pool of n individuals, it's more likely to be someone at the lower range, and so the remaining (n-1) persons will be higher on average? I'm also reminded of the paper making the rounds a couple of years ago showing that uniform allocation of wealth, combined with simple exchange processes, in the presence of randomness, can lead to very skewed wealth distributions independent of anything else.
- isaac21259 5y ago
  Any chance you remember what the paper was called? I'd love to read it.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    Ugh. Unfortunately I can't find it anywhere (there's a couple of things like this lately, that I remember being discussed a lot on HN and being covered in the news, and now have disappeared in the ocean of the internet). However, these discuss or demonstrate very similar things (especially the first two): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine... https://medium.com/swlh/extreme-wealth-inequality-is-inevitable-in-a-free-market-it-can-be-numerically-proved-but-there-e1b5eada0dca https://medium.com/swlh/extreme-wealth-inequality-is-inevita... https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1474734 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1474734 It's weird to me I can't find it because it was picked up in some large news and economics outlets. Basically, there was an agent-based simulation with really simple conditions that showed that even when everyone starts out with the same income, and you have some really simple exchanges of income that are essentially random, you end up with income distributions that look really similar to actual income distributions in the US. I think the Scientific American piece discusses some of the same phenomena, and a similar simulation is discussed in the Medium piece. The paper that was going around was very simple in its assumptions, though, and very clearly written.
naveen99 5y ago
Average is higher than median. But if you compare two friends, by symmetry you can’t tell who has more friends.

27 points by chirau 5y ago

Would this in general be true of any attribute that is significantly skewed? I.e., if you remove someone at random from a pool of n individuals, it's more likely to be someone at the lower range, and so the remaining (n-1) persons will be higher on average? I'm also reminded of the paper making the rounds a couple of years ago showing that uniform allocation of wealth, combined with simple exchange processes, in the presence of randomness, can lead to very skewed wealth distributions independent of anything else.

isaac21259 5y ago
Any chance you remember what the paper was called? I'd love to read it.
- derbOac 5y ago
  Ugh. Unfortunately I can't find it anywhere (there's a couple of things like this lately, that I remember being discussed a lot on HN and being covered in the news, and now have disappeared in the ocean of the internet). However, these discuss or demonstrate very similar things (especially the first two): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine... https://medium.com/swlh/extreme-wealth-inequality-is-inevitable-in-a-free-market-it-can-be-numerically-proved-but-there-e1b5eada0dca https://medium.com/swlh/extreme-wealth-inequality-is-inevita... https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1474734 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1474734 It's weird to me I can't find it because it was picked up in some large news and economics outlets. Basically, there was an agent-based simulation with really simple conditions that showed that even when everyone starts out with the same income, and you have some really simple exchanges of income that are essentially random, you end up with income distributions that look really similar to actual income distributions in the US. I think the Scientific American piece discusses some of the same phenomena, and a similar simulation is discussed in the Medium piece. The paper that was going around was very simple in its assumptions, though, and very clearly written.

naveen99 5y ago

Average is higher than median. But if you compare two friends, by symmetry you can’t tell who has more friends.