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Facebook Friend Suggestions

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/29/how-does-facebook-suggest-potential-friends-not-location-data-not-now This article talks about the way Facebook suggest potential friends to appear on one’s Facebook account. More specifically it looks  about the types of elements that the suggestion algorithm uses to make these suggestions.  In the past, in addition to simply offering suggestions based on who has a significant amount of mutual friends, aka […]

Triadic closures help the brain remember complex social networks

http://www.livescience.com/28095-brain-relationship-memory-shortcuts.html How does our brain remember the complex network of family, friends, acquaintances and enemies? It turns out that our brain simplifies social networks into a simpler network of rules based on who knows who. We are more likely to remember who someone is and how they relate to us if they form a triadic […]

Information Cascades in Social Media: Crisis and Viral Trends

Articles: Information Cascades in Social Media in Response to a Crisis: a Preliminary Model and a Case Study Predicting Successful Memes using Network and Community Structure Seeking a respite from his immense workload, Harambe logs into Facebook. Boom! A couple of hundred memes pop up on his timeline. Harambe is irritated. “These memes make absolutely […]

Brazilian Congress structural balance analysis

On September 2nd, Mario Levorato and Yuri Frota of The Fluminense Federal University in Brazil released a preprint of their paper titled “Brazilian Congress structural balance analysis.” Perhaps highly relevant in the wake of ex-president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, this paper explores the nature of Brazilian politicking by analyzing voting data between 2011 and 2016 from […]

Game Theory and Morality

Imagine you are a judge. The prison cells are under renovation and the jail cell only has room for one more, but you still have two people to judge. You take a look at the two cases. One is for Joe, who has poisoned and killed someone, and the other is for Jill, who admitted […]

Game Theory and the Cold War

Game theory’s importance accelerated at a tremendous pace around the time of the second world war. Though its applications had so far largely been in the field of economics, both the Soviet Union and the United States saw the immense potential for the use of game theory in war strategies. At first the US Eisenhower administration viewed […]

Has Social Networking Killed Relationships?

Like many other college students, I have done my fair share of procrastination via Netflix. One show that captured my attention was How I Met Your Mother, the popular friends-based sitcom. The show follows the lives and plights of a group of young people living in New York City, particularly Ted Mosby, who is searching […]

Do Weak Ties Create a Strong Entrepreneur?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242020804_Does_the_degree_of_redundancy_in_social_networks_influence_the_success_of_business_start-ups Grannovetter’s theory regarding the strength of weak ties is often illustrated by the fact that a person is more likely to receive help finding a job from an acquaintance rather than a close friend.   The article above by Jan Jenssen examines if this theory holds true in the fast paced world of startups as […]

Understanding payoffs

In the study of game theory, it is important to understand the payoff each player receives (depending on the strategies that all players employ). It is these payoffs that allow us to predict how each player will behave; in class, we have used payoff matrices to visualize likely scenarios for several games. In the games […]

Structural Balance in Politics

Donald Trump’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin Currently, in case you’re not from the United States and/or you don’t follow the American presidential campaign, there are two frontrunner candidates for President of the United States. Clearly since they are running against each other they are destined to hate each other. Staying true to this […]

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