The most striking feature of the network was a single component that connected 52 percent (288) of the romantically involved students at Jefferson. This means student A had relations with student B, who had relations with student C and so on, connecting all 288 of these students.
While this component is large, it has numerous short branches and is very broad – the two most distant individuals are 37 steps apart. (Or to use a currently popular term, there were 37 degrees of separation between the two most-distant students.)
“From a student’s perspective, a large chain like this would boggle the mind,” Moody said. “They might know that their partner had a previous partner. But they don’t think about the fact that this partner had a previous partner, who had a partner, and so on.
“What this shows, for the first time, is that there are many of these links in a chain, going far beyond what anyone could see and hold in their head.”
That "striking feature" must be something recognizable in high school culture. The jock/cheerleader nexus?
Ping for later.
Notice, no male-male, female-female junctions in the network.