Networks Influencing MRI Use
This article discusses a study, conducted by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which found that surgeons’ use of imaging tests is influenced by the practices of their peers. The researchers found clusters of surgeons by looking at Medicare data to identify which surgeons frequently share patients with […]
Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Holiday Season
https://theconversation.com/how-to-apply-game-theory-to-buying-your-christmas-presents-52233 At approximately this time of year, people begin shopping for holiday gifts for their friends. This can be a sometimes confusing situation when a person is not sure if they are exchanging with a particular friend, because a gift that is not reciprocated becomes awkward. Furthermore, the act of gift-giving can be modeled as […]
Bitcoin’s 2017 Rise
Bitcoin, the most popular and original cryptocurrency has risen dramatically in 2017, from $700 to $8100 per Bitcoin. A large part of this is due to a rise in legitimacy. For example, on October 31st, the CME Group, a financial institution announced the launch of Bitcoin futures. A future is a type of contract that […]
Information Cascades in the Animal Kingdom
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cultural-copying-and-learning-observed-in-monkey-and-whale-species/ It is not well known to most that there are social structures within the animal kingdom. Each new experiment that ties networks into a group of animals is proving the fact that there are structures in the animal kingdom, same as in the human world. Two separate studies were conducted and compiled into one […]
Falsification in Sociological Threshold Models
In class, we talked extensively about threshold models, especially in their relation to collective behavior. Take, for example, the classic example of IPhone users versus Android users: if you, a long-time Android user, are deciding upon a new phone, you may take into account that 40% and rising of your friends now have IPhones, and […]
Is Cooperation Ever an Evolutionary Stable Strategy?
In last Friday’s lecture discussing the concept of evolutionary game theory, I was struck when professor Easley presented the game in which aggressive strategy prevailed over the passive strategy. More specifically, I was quite incredulous that in this example aggressive behavior was an evolutionary stable strategy while passive was not, when in reality there are […]
Informational Cascade vs Herd Behavior
https://eml.berkeley.edu//~kariv/CK_II.pdf This academic paper talks about how the authors conduct an experimental study to distinguish informational cascade from herd behavior. The two concepts are used interchangeably in some contexts, but the authors distinguish them buy their subtle differences. An informational cascade describes when an infinite sequence of individuals ignore their private information when making […]
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Understanding the Mania of Network Effects
Through my work with Cornell Blockchain, every week there are three things I look out for. First: The news of the week – a combination of political, technological, and innovation that the blockchain space has undergone. Examples include China’s ban on ICOs, Ethereum’s Devcon 3 releases of Casper protocol upgrade, and companies like IBM, Mastercard, […]
How Inside Information Effects Information Cascades
https://hbr.org/2015/04/having-inside-information-leads-to-worse-decisions When we discussed information cascades in class, we mostly focused on how people make decisions based on only the evidence that they observe. In the urn examples, each person observed the marble that they pulled out from the urn as well as the responses of previous people who had picked out of the […]