Reed's Law Website Links For
Reeds
 

Information About

Reed's Law




The reason for this is that the number of possible sub-groups of network participants is 2^N - N - 1 \, , where N is the number of participants. This grows much more rapidly than either
  • the number of participants, N, or

  • the number of possible pair connections, rac{N(N-1)}{2} (which follows Metcalfe's Law )

  • so that even if the utility of groups available to be joined is very small on a per-group basis, eventually the Network Effect of potential group membership can dominate the overall economics of the system.



DERIVATION

Given a Set ''A'' of ''N'' people, it has 2^N possible subsets. This is not difficult to see, since we can form each possible subset by simply choosing for each element of ''A'' one of two possibilities: whether to include that element, or not.

However, this includes the (one) empty set, and ''N'' Singleton s, which are not properly subgroups. So 2^N - N - 1 subsets remain, which is exponential, like 2^N .


QUOTE

From David P. Reed's, "The Law of the Pack" (Harvard Business Review, February 2001, pp 23-4):

:" {Link without Title} ven Metcalfe's Law understates the value created by a group-forming network as it grows. Let's say you have a GFN with n members. If you add up all the potential two-person groups, three-person groups, and so on that those members could form, the number of possible groups equals 2^n. So the value of a GFN increases exponentially, in proportion to 2^n. I call that Reed's Law. And its implications are profound."


SEE ALSO



EXTERNAL LINKS