Your friends are probably more popular
than you are
and it's not just you either I can say
this with a lot of certainty because this
actually applies to most people. But it's
not really a bad thing.
Let me explain. First, we need to
understand that
oddly enough comparing yourself to your
friends is not that accurate a comparison
for instance people with few friends are
not likely to be in your list of friends
but much more likely to exist in the
general public. In statistics
this is called sampling bias. In other
words, the sample of people you're
comparing yourself to you
is biased compared to people in general.
There are relatively
more people with lots of friends and
relatively fewer people with not a lot of friends
but the question still remains: how can
most people's friends be more popular than them?
 
Won't we run out of people if we continue
this trend
Well you have to remember that people
can cap more than once
 
Looking back at the web of friends from
earlier, it seems that this person over here
makes 5 people seem less popular, but this
person over here they don't influence
anyone's numbers
As a general statement, the more friends
you have, the more averages you influence
and so the effect applies without us ever running out of people.
So next time you find yourself saddened by how many more friends everybody seems to have
just remember it's all probably just a
bit math trickery
By the way, if you wanna check if this
effect applies to you, you can always
check your various social media accounts and
crunch the numbers yourself. There's evidence to suggest that this effect applies to
Facebook and Twitter but
who knows where else you'll find it. And while
you're there, consider sharing this video
Nice segue, huh?
