The Benefits of Building Weak Ties At Work
This article takes on an interesting approach as to why it could actually be more beneficial to build weak ties rather than strong ties in the workplace. Oftentimes, we overlook the importance of weak ties and focus more on strong ties because the idea of having a valuable relationship over just another acquaintance is more […]
Modeling Offense in Team Sports as a Network
Article/blog link: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/414784/basketball-and-the-theory-of-networks/ Paper link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1801.pdf Injuries happen in sports, and often the best player on a team will have to sit out of several games. However, there have been cases where the loss of a player has apparently spurred everyone else to perform better, such that the team actually sees better results than before […]
Prisoners’ Dilemma in Trade War
https://www.ft.com/content/d288a98e-2e90-11e8-9b4b-bc4b9f08f381 Over the past years, the world’s two largest economies have imposed tariffs on billions of dollars on each other’s goods, and the rounds of escalation still continue. US President Donald Trump has long accused China of unfair trading practices and intellectual property theft, while China claims that the US is trying to curb its […]
Exploitative Behavior in Iterated Prisoners Dilemma
This article explores a study by Yuma Fujimotoa and Kunihiko Kaneko at the University of Tokyo in Japan titled “Emergence of Exploitation as Symmetry Breaking in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma”. The Iterated Prisoners Dilemma is the Prisoners Dilemma but repeated many times. Here, players can not just choose the best outcome based on the current scenario […]
Social Networks and Misinformation: a Threat to Democracy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/11/heres-how-social-media-could-threaten-democracy-even-without-help-russians/?noredirect=on Social media has gotten a lot of flack for facilitating Russian Interference, fake bots, and propaganda spreading. A large portion of this misinformation is circulated around, and many people trust what they are reading. Due to this, there is a large research effort to fully understand how social networks, “fake news,” and the internet […]
Oracle v. Google and Game Theory
Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc. What happens if Google loses the Oracle suit? In 1996, Sun Microsystems released a programming language, Java, along with a set of libraries, to the public. In 2003, Android Inc, purchased by Google only two years later, began using Java to develop the mobile operating system, Android. The makers […]
How airlines use game theory to reduce the number of involuntarily bumped passengers
Because of United’s involuntary ‘de-planing’ of David Dao in April of 2017, overbooking flights has been in the news. The general idea is that, on average, a small percentage of the passengers will not show up for any given flight. Instead of letting these seats fly empty, they are filled by customers who have bought […]
Crossing the Aisle and the Balance Theorem: What can we learn?
While learning in lecture about the Structural Balance Property and the Balance Theorem, one contemporary example of a network I thought of which could be split into two groups generally on good internal terms but bad external terms was the US congress. Of course, this network is not perfectly balanced because plenty of congressmembers have […]
What Game Theory Tells Us About Boris Johnson’s Brexit Strategy
Source: https://theconversation.com/suspending-parliament-could-be-the-act-of-a-credible-madman-or-master-bluffer-top-game-theorist-on-boris-johnson-122489 This article analyzes the recent actions of Boris Johnson and looks to determine if the new UK Prime Minister would actually go through with a no-deal Brexit. Johnson has repeatedly pledged to leave the European Union by the October deadline with or without a deal in an attempt to pressure the EU and […]
Combating Fake Views on YouTube
https://theoutline.com/post/3804/inside-youtube-s-fake-views-economy?zd=1&zi=46aprclr Anybody who uses social media for an extended period of time will notice the presence of bots. Spam accounts that post large amounts of content—oftentimes stolen or completely nonsensical—with the aim of generating revenue. However, many are not aware of an entire industry that revolves around inflating the number of “likes” and other metrics […]
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