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From:
Subject: Re: Need for a six degrees program
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 12:13:33 GMT
References: <3f3dfc2e.65776289@news.saix.net> <Xns93DAEF2A4BAB8delirious@203.97.37.6>


Lesley Walker wrote:
>
> (Steve Hayes) wrote:
> > May I suggest that instead of developing yet another genealogy
> > program, since there are already more than enough of those,
> > someone devise a "six degrees" program. This is where the real
> > need seems to be.
> >
> > This is based on the proposition that everyone on earth is no
> > more than six degrees of relationship away from anyone else. In
> > other words, my wife's cousin's boss's dog's mother's owner's
> > best friend's daughter knows me.
>
> It's an interesting idea, but if I was designing it I'd hate to have
> to figure out how to represent all those relationships in a database
> and keep them consistent. The error-checking required would be truly
> horrible.

How will you represent the unknown "milkman" factor?

Or even worse, the DAFN relationships in the 'hood where
there are so much unstructured sexual relations that the
principals have no idea who is *really* related to whom?

Better to have one giant DNA database, like Howard University's
African Roots program, and a Monte Carlo styled code to produce
a list of people/probabilities/closeness-of-relationship of
any two people...

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