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Network Effect and the Failure of the Picturephone

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25148054.pdf The “Picturephone” was a revolutionary product created by AT&T and introduced at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was essentially an early version of FaceTime or Skype, a system that transmitted the user’s image and voice simultaneously. However, despite the companies optimism about the product, it failed miserably. Following its introduction in 1964, […]

The Spread of Juul Popularity

Networks Blog #3: The Price of Cool: A Teenager, a Juul and Nicotine Addiction Main article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/health/vaping-juul-teens-addiction-nicotine.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront Recently, there has been a lot of discussion around Juuls and teenage usage. A Juul is an e-cigarette that has become very popular among young adults who, having gone through years of health classes, know better than to […]

Zipf’s Law, The Internet, and Cascades

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/adamicglottometrics.pdf   Zipf’s law is a kind of distribution that a large percentage of data follow. Properties following Zipf’s law have a frequency that is a power law of their rank. In fact, any p.d.f. (probability density function) defined purely by a power-law may be converted into a Zipf’s law style equation instead by identifying […]

Do Polls Influence the Vote?

https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472099213-ch11.pdf https://www.france24.com/en/20170506-france-media-rules-prohibit-election-coverage-over-weekend-presidential-poll “Starting from the night before polls open, it is illegal to publish or broadcast by all means of communication any message that may be categorised as electoral propaganda,” France’s Superior Audiovisual Council, or CSA, said in a statement. France prohibits polling 44 hours before presidential and legislative elections, likely to prevent the effect […]

Networks, spread of diseases and gossip

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-07-21-how-do-networks-shape-spread-disease-and-gossip The article “How do networks shape the spread of disease and gossip?” introduces a new approach to investigate the spread of contagious disease and gossip. The data set for the spread of disease is quite complicated since there is a lot of useful information that is mixed with gossip spreading over social media. Mathematicians […]

Game Theory in response to Natural Disasters

https://theconversation.com/response-to-natural-disasters-like-harvey-could-be-helped-with-game-theory-83125 After every natural disaster there is always a moment when our country comes together and signals togetherness, acts as a shoulder for many to cry on and looks to see what the people who weren’t directly affected can do to help those in need. When looking to see what they can do, people who […]

Network effect and the New Sharing Economy

https://developingworldantitrust.com/2017/05/09/network-effects-and-the-assessment-of-market-power-in-the-sharing-economy/ The article discusses the role of network effects on market power in sharing economies. This business model, based around peer to peer market interactions, has given rise to a host of fast-growing, powerful start-ups. “Unicorns are startup companies that have not generated a single cent in revenue but are able to marshal multimillion-dollar amounts […]

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