About This Lesson
This lesson explains the Friendship Paradox—including the intuition behind the result, how we use graphs to formalize the paradox, and a proof of the paradox. While the primary learning objective is for students to learn how one proves the Friendship Paradox, a secondary objective is to introduce students to graph theory. Students should come away with an understanding of the vocabulary related to graph theory (vertices, edges, etc.) as well as how to use graphs to model simple situations (e.g., social networks). As a prerequisite to this lesson, students should understand how to calculate the mean and variance of a set of numbers, be familiar with summation notation and manipulation of sums, and be able to perform algebraic manipulation. The lesson itself should take between an hour and an hour and a half, and could easily be split over two class periods. The video segments of this lesson run for 25 minutes, interspersed with six classroom activities for students. These activities involve partner discussions, extending algebraic formulas from the video, and working with provided social network datasets. The materials necessary are minimal: students will need the two sets of provided worksheets, their own pencil and paper, and some long pieces of string or yarn for Activity 3 (the number of pieces will vary depending on the size of your class).
For more information: http://blossoms.mit.edu/videos/lessons/friendship_paradox_why_we_can%E2…
