Why not build more roads?
Link: http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/?mbid=social_twitter In this article, Adam Mann discusses a thought we’ve all had: why don’t we just build more lanes to alleviate traffic? This obvious answer, it turns out, would actually make traffic worse — as he puts it, “it’s the roads themselves that cause traffic.” Mann discusses induced demand: the idea that increasing supply of […]
Mixed Nash Equilibrium in Football
This article about the way the Seahawks use their top-flight cornerback, Richard Sherman, reminded me of the game theory concepts we’ve discussed in lecture. Basically, what the Seahawks do is keep Sherman on one side of the field for the entire game, instead of having him follow the other team’s best receiver in coverage. He […]
Ferguson, Missouri and the Growing Trend of Police Brutality
On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was fatally shot six times by 28-year-old Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Brown, an 18-year-old African American male, was unarmed; he had been impeding traffic by walking down the middle of the street with 22-year-old Dorian Johnson when Wilson pulled up in a police cruiser. From this point on, […]
6 Degrees of Separation
The theory of 6 degrees of separation states that everyone is only 6 degrees or links away from anyone in the world by way of introduction, which is explained further in the theory’s Wikipedia page. This was idealized by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and never truly proved, but accepted by popular culture. At the time […]
Putin’s Push: Examining Ukraine Through Game Theory
Game Theory is an exceedingly useful way to think about the world, especially when applied to matters of international relations and diplomacy. Every action, statement, or decision made by any nation has been put under the microscope of Game Theory in an attempt to understand how other countries will react as well as whether they […]
Muscle Car Auction
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/automobiles/seized-and-sold-the-marshal-holds-a-muscle-car-auction.html This week, the United States Marshal Service auctioned off 9 rare muscle cars in a classic English auction. In an English auction, or an ascending bid auction, potential buyers raise the offered price until nobody is willing to offer more than the previous bid, at which point the previous bidder will pay his […]
Graph Theory and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
If you have logged on to Facebook in the past few months, most likely you have seen videos of people dumping buckets of ice water on their heads. The Ice Bucket Challenge, which has been used to promote awareness for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), went viral this summer over social media. The idea with the […]
Local Bridges and Their Influence on Information
Local bridges, especially when their spans are large, play important role in information communication. By definition, local bridges provide their endpoints with source of information that they would be otherwise far away from. But if we view local bridges from a more critical perspective, they do provide pure information to their endpoints but meanwhile, they […]
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