Matt Salganik has posted the estimates of the number of acquaintances (the so-called “degree distribution”) for a random sample of Americans. These estimates come from the analysis of Tian Zheng, Matt, and myself of survey data by Killworth, McCarty et al. that just appeared in the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Here are the estimated distributions:
but the data are actually better than this because they have estimates along with background information on 1370 respondents, so you can do analyses like this regression of log (#acquantainces):
P.S. A reader writes,
I was looking at your blog today and I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful use of graphics to display regression results in your post “More fun for Sociologists.” What statistical program are you using to produce these type of figures? Are they canned reporting procedures or are you building up these figures from scratch.
We used R. But the graphs were far from automatic to make. We’re still trying to figure out a way to be able to make these sorts of pictures with less trial-and-error. In any case, here’s a link to an excellent book by Paul Murrell on R graphics. I myself have some thoughts about how R graphics could be easier to use, but that’s a topic for another entry.
The results for gender are interesting and different than common-sense and gender theory understandings about women's roles in maintaining relationshps. But given that women have (on average) lower incomes and are less likely to be employed, I wonder what interactions would tell us. (i.e., are there gender differences among the employed or higher income group?).