I just discovered Reed's Law

Chris Corrigan chris at chriscorrigan.com
Thu Sep 12 15:12:04 PDT 2002


Jaime wrote:

>  Hi Chris!!!
>
>  Congratulations for a job well done. I always face
>  claims about the small number of participants for
>  prospective OS mettings in Bolivia. Reed's Law will be
>  an excellent argument to show possibilities. However,
>  I can not replicate the formula in order to confirm
>  your findings for 12 people and 4083 possible groups.
>  Could you please explain in a more detailed way the
>  formula for me?
>

The way I figure it, it's 212-12-1.  So that's 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2
which is 4096.  4096-12=4084.  4084-1=4083.

That's how I did it anyway.  That gives you all the possible
combinations of groups of more than two.  Of course in OST, often groups
of one meet, so that number is a little low.  I'm no math genius, but
any way you cut it, the numbers are pretty impressive.  A group of 32
yields a number close to 22 billion, which is something like four times
the population of the earth.  Not that you can make any comparisons
directly, but as a way of illustrating the scale of possibilities, to be
able to walk around a room of 32 and say "within this circle, the number
ways of organizing ourselves dwarf the population of humans on the
earth" is a pretty compelling introduction to the potential of
potential.  I'm going try the line this weekend, with a group of 32.

>  By the way, in the battle or sluggish against GM
>  (genetically modified) seeds and organisms, your
>  finding is very important.
>

I thought so too.  The world is a strange place.

>  Warm regards from Bolivia to everybody
>

Right back at you.

Chris

---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Bowen Island, BC, Canada
http://www.chriscorrigan.com
chris at chriscorrigan.com

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