The friendship paradox refers to the sociological observation that, while the people’s assessment of their own popularity is typically self-aggrandizing, in reality they are less popular than their friends. The generalized friendship paradox is the average alter superiority observed empirically in social settings, scientific collaboration networks, as well as online social media. We posit a qua...

Previous studies have shown that the maximizing orientation, reflecting a motivation to select the best option among a given set of choices, is associated with various negative psychological outcomes. In the present studies, we examined whether these relationships extend to friendship selection and how the number of options for friends moderated these effects. Across 5 studies, maximizing in se...

Let (X,B) be a set system in which B is a set of 3-subsets of X. Then (X,B) is a friendship 3hypergraph if it satisfies the following property: for all distinct elements u, v, w ∈ X, there exists a unique fourth element x ∈ X such that {u, v, x}, {u,w, x}, {v, w, x} ∈ B. The element x is called the completion of u, v, w and we say u, v, w is completed by x. If a friendship 3-hypergraph contains...

For r ≥ 2, an r-uniform hypergraph is called a friendship r-hypergraph if every set R of r vertices has a unique ‘friend’ – that is, there exists a unique vertex x / ∈ R with the property that for each subset A ⊆ R of size r − 1, the set A ∪ {x} is a hyperedge. We show that for r ≥ 3, the number of hyperedges in a friendship r-hypergraph is at least r+1 r ( n−1 r−1 ) , and we characterise those...

The formation and maintenance of friendship closeness is an important developmental task in adolescence. To obtain insight real-time processes that may underly the development middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated effects social media use on closeness. was conducted among 387 adolescents (54% girls; Mage = 14.11 years; 96% Dutch) from different educ...

We investigate the structure of positions obtained by turning the Skewb. These ‘legal’ positions are singled out among the positions obtained by disassembling and arbitrarily reassembling the Skewb. The set of legal positions is modelled as a group, the ‘Skewb group’, that is characterised as the kernel of a group homomorphism. Also, the Skewb group is shown to be isomorphic to a group of known...

Finding a parking space in San Francisco City Area is really a headache issue. We try to find a reliable way to give parking information by prediction. We reveals the effect of aggregation on prediction for parking occupancy in San Francisco. Different empirical aggregation levels are tested with several prediction models. Moreover it proposes a sufficient condition leading to prediction error ...

The topic of human relationships—be they positive and sympathetic, or negative and hostile—receives a great amount of attention in the Qur’ān. Human beings need to be aware of both their friends and their enemies in order to learn how to engage with both groups, how to make additional friends and defend themselves from harm caused by enemies, and, if possible, turn these enemies into friends. T...

Friendships are an important context of children’s development, yet there is much still to be learned about these formative relationships. Friendship stability is one understudied feature of children’s friendships. The aim of the present study was to investigate both predictors and outcomes associated with friendship stability to further elucidate the role that friendships play in shaping child...