News Finding: "If one has a large number of relationships, it must mean that they are almost all superficial."
Paper Finding: More interestingly, it predicts that when the number of available relationships is small, this structure is inverted, having more close relationships than acquaintances.
News Context: "It is impossible to have relationships with 150 people and for them all to be intimate," explains co-author Ignacio Tamarit. "If one has a large number of relationships, it must mean that they are almost all superficial." The researchers predicted this effect using a mathematical theory and then found that it held true in actual data gathered on the personal networks of isolated immigrant communities in Spain.
Paper Context: Of itself, this distribution yields no structure whatsoever but it is a reasonable More interestingly, it predicts that when the number of available relationships is small, this structure is inverted, having more close relationships than acquaintances. We provide evidence of the existence of both regimes in real communities and analyze the consequences of these findings in our understanding of social groups.