gossip graphs

[lnr]

Well, despite the fact we had internet again we managed to spend the rest of the evening not sitting in front of it, which was lovely. Dinner and a bottle of wine, followed by much giggling over the local gossip graph. We haven't managed to prove it can't be drawn in 2-d with no lines crossing yet, but we haven't managed to draw it either. We started to formulate evil plans as to who we had to persuade to sleep together to make it impossible to draw, but didn't find any matches we thought were very plausible.

Got to bed at a reasonable hour but didn't sleep terribly well in my case, leading to being at least as shattered this morning as I was yesterday, if not more so. Set some work going from home and then went back to bed for a couple of hours. Now feeling a bit more human, but nowhere near perfect. With a busy weekend ahead I'm not sure how soon I'm going to be feeling properly better at this rate, but at least I had the sense to book Monday off work. Will try not to sleep any more during the day today or I'll never sleep tonight.

Comments

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

During my undergraduate days the customary method of dealing with undrawable gossip graphs was to construct them in 3 dimensions with the help of pipecleaners and glue. I still have one of them. For better structural integrity it helps for there to be a large number of triangles. :)

[lnr]

As I say, we're not entirely convinced it's undrawable. Trying to prove it was was simply laziness, since it was looking like hard work to untangle it.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Naturally this is where GraphViz (http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/) comes into play - I use it to display the interdependancies of the machines here at work, so it should cope with the relationship structures in our group quite well :)

[daneel-olivaw.livejournal.com]

The relationship structure (AIUI anyway) ain't too bad. But I feel sorry for anyone who tries to maintain a gossip map, both in terms of trying to keep the thing up to date and in terms of the likely amount of flack that will result in the thing being public-domain!

[lnr]

Well, we were including more than just relationships, and including past links as well as current ones, though we kept it to nothing less than shagging: if you try and document everyone who's snogged everyone else it just becomes impossible. But we wouldn't make it public domain, and it probably isn't perfectly accurate. It's just a fun thing to do occasionally.

Interesting to see just how the immediate relationship structure has changed though since last time I drew it: a new loop, a couple of people gone, and another one added. And who knows what it might do in future. I'm not drawing it again though in case any of the people involved are offended at me making that much public.

[songster.livejournal.com]

If you're including past relationships, I'm rather intrigued as to how you can say people have gone. How *do* you un-shag someone?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

She's talking about two separate graphs - one with all relationships and sex past and present, the other just with current relationships (among a smaller set of people, too).

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I well remember the drawing of such a chart in an SU Bar - the person drawing it was unaware that their current shag had dallied with a particular someone else. When everyone else there said "oh you've missed out X" all hell broke loose. (And it would really have screwed up the chart too, the way she'd drawn it.) It took weeks for the fall-out from that to subside.

I nearly always find myself shuddering when such things are drawn, not because of who I've shagged but because of who *they* have shagged. Not people I want to be associated with, especially in some of the specific contexts. OTOH we were quite chuffed to find a "six degrees of separation" style relationship between most of us in that bar and a number of quite famous people. :-)

Re: Aye

[k425.livejournal.com]

I am so glad you've booked Monday off - I was expecting to be getting up at whatever time you would normally do so, so you could go to work!

Oh, alcohol's a stimulant, which could be contributing to not sleeping too well.

Re: Aye

[lnr]

Still not sleeping well despite not drinking. Ah well, will all catch up at some point, and I seem to be getting lots done from home.

As for Monday: couldn't face the idea of getting up early after a weekend half away and half in the pub.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've seen a LJ community somewhere which was an attempt to produce a full "who's slept with whom?" graph for everyone on LJ in the community. Couldn't find it just now when I looked for it, though.

[simont]

Is that ljsexchart, perhaps?