Amazon HQ2 and a unique matching market
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/as-amazon-narrows-choice-for-hq2these-cities-finishing-strong.html In this article, they discuss the bidding war for Amazon’s newest headquarters. This bidding war resembles a matching market where market clearing prices are adjusted based on desirability and others bids. Amazon has defined their own definition of desirability: the location must be a metropolitan area with over 1 million people, a stable and […]
Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Presshttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/tech-monopoly-democracy-journalism.html
This article discusses how the onset of advertising online has destroyed journalism. Advertising as corrupted the way individuals receive information. Money no longer supports journalism but is now captured by Google and Facebook. As a result, money is used to support the spread of fake news. The only way to save the free press is […]
Student tracking, secret scores: How college admissions offices rank prospects before they apply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/14/colleges-quietly-rank-prospective-students-based-their-personal-data/ In an article published by the Washington Post, Douglas MacMillan and Nick Anderson discuss how web activity and cookies are becoming a different form of demonstrated interest. “Student tracking, secret scores: How college admissions offices rank prospects before they apply” reveals that colleges are starting to collect data not only through applications, but […]
The Web’s Creator Looks to Reinvent It
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/technology/the-webs-creator-looks-to-reinvent-it.html Although this article is a few years old, it still discusses a highly relevant issue in the World Wide Web, and the social factors that have deviated it from its original intention. The article begins with the premise that what was meant to be tool for scientists at CERN and became a globally […]
Sports and Politics
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/15/how-sports-tactics-can-help-the-democrats-beat-donald-trump-in-2020 This article discusses the strategy of protecting the lead in sports, mainly basketball. The strategy of “protecting the lead” refers to the idea of a team trying to run down the time in a game while they are ahead. For basketball, the leading team would try to maintain possession of the ball until […]
Using Networks to Understand and Model Epidemiology
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-airborne-disease-diffusion.html Network theory, as we have learned, has a variety of uses that spans many different disciplines which is why our course is cross listed amongst many departments. The attached article is an example of how understanding network theory can help us in areas like healthcare and epidemiology. A team at Macquarie University is […]
How the Network Effect Keeps Us Addicted
This article, titled “Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s By Design” talks about how social media apps keep users addicted due to the Network Effect. When the Network Effect is present, the value of a product increases as the amount of users increases. According to this article, the more users that join Instagram, the more […]
The Election as a Market
Candidates are gearing up for the 2020 election which means there is a lot of strategizing that needs to be done and it starts with winning primaries. For our purposes, we will be thinking of the election as a market where the voters are the sellers and the buyers are the candidates. I propose that […]
Tearing town a highway to improve traffic in city
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/04/tearing-down-urban-highway-can-give-rise-whole-new-city/8924/ Highly populated cities like New York, Tokyo, and Seoul tends to have issue of traffic congestion throughout the city. Many commuters who commute with their cars get frustrated with how little official could do in order to improve this issue. For example, although adding a direct route from origin to destination seems […]
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