01 September 2011

Why Aspergians Hate Large Group Interactions


A question many people ask about Asperger Syndrome is: Why do Aspergians hate interacting with large groups of people?  To answer this question, I think of a mathematical model of the number of different connections between computers in a network.  In a social context, we treat each person involved in the interaction as a node in the network.  Each of these connections is bidirectional.  As one can clearly see in the table below, the number of connections increases in a combinatorial fashion as more people join the group.  Therefore, it becomes increasingly difficult to pay full attention to what everyone is saying to one another.

# of People                        # of Communication Links

2
0 + 1 = 1
3
0 + 1 + 2 = 3
4
0 + 1 + 2 + 3 = 6
5
0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10
6
0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15
n
   = n(n-1)/2

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