Information Cascades in “Fake News”
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-countering-fake-news-contagions.html The words “fake news” have become a hot-button political topic with the current US administration and last year’s election. Many people from all sides assert that certain news being spread around is not real and is purposely portraying one person or group in a bad light to gain traction for the opposing views. This […]
Google’s Search Now Predicts Content
As discussed in the article linked here, Google’s search bar has taken a step in linking the history of the user to the results shown. Up until this change, the only determining factors in what was shown at the top of your Google search were the ranks of each page in relation to the search […]
Solving the Fake News Problem through Network Theory
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/29/facebook-fake-news-problem-experts-pitch-ideas-algorithms In 1996, Stanford Computer Science students Sergey Brin and Larry Page famously published their renowned paper: “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” Since then, this paper was been academically cited 16839 times and the engine that they have proposed has turned into the famous company Google, which now has a valuation […]
Power Ranking for Sports Teams
In the late 2000s, a new ranking system, called Power Ranking, for sports teams starting increasing in popularity. This system is now extremely common as Power Rankings for all major sports are typically updated weekly. In football for example, the Power Rank algorithm, at the time the article was written, took into account only two […]
Information Cascade in the US Presidential Election
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-really-was-a-liberal-media-bubble/ This blog post by FiveThiryEight discusses the most recent US presidential election. Going into election day, the mainstream liberal media had almost entirely dismissed the possibility of Trump being elected, with normally reliable sources like the New York Times (and even FiveThirtyEight itself) holding Clinton as a very heavy favorite to win. But as […]
Google’s Attempts to stop “Fake News,” and their effect on leftist media
https://www.salon.com/2017/10/18/fake-news-or-free-speech-is-google-cracking-down-on-left-media/ This article is about how leftist media sites like Democracy Now!, Alternet, the World Socialist Web, and others have had declines in search result traffic as a result of Google’s efforts to stop the spread of hate speech and “fake news.” After the 2016 election, many critics accused web entities like Google and Facebook […]
Prisoner’s Dilemma of Kenyan Politics
Link: http://www.herald.co.zw/kenyas-political-game-theory/ The prisoner’s dilemma shows how individual self interest can prevent socially optimal cooperation. This game theory situation is able to clearly express this concept thanks to the quantifiable nature of prison sentencing. Though game theory is often applied to easily quantifiable situations creates clear outcomes, the concept has applications in less clear fields. The […]
Nash Equilibrium for Dating Apps
Link: https://qz.com/996851/why-we-need-a-dating-app-that-understands-nashs-equilibrium/ Commentary The above article, written by Abhishek Madhavan, details the history and use of Nash equilibriums before describing how its concept would be useful if implemented into dating apps. With the recent proliferation of dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, there’s a disproportionate amount of women to men (40% women and 60% men), in […]
Facebook Battles Fake News
Think about the last place you got your news from. Were you reading a newspaper? Watching TV? Or did you see an article that someone shared on Facebook or Twitter? Most people would fall under that last category. According to PEW Research, about 60% of US adults get their news from social media. This in […]
Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.371.9978&rep=rep1&type=pdf Large numbers of economic researches show that people typically do not behave as selfish as traditional economics assume. The ultimatum game we talked about in class provides convincing evidence in this perspective. The result of the game illustrates how tastes for fairness and the anticipation that small offers may be turned down affect decision […]
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