OPEC and Oil Prices
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/organization_of_petroleum_exporting_countries/index.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904265504576566281818778532.html When looking at oil prices and the supply of oil OPEC always comes up as a major player. OPEC is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and is comprised of Algeria, Angola, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. They control 77% of the worlds known […]
The Game of Evolution
While we have only scratched the surface of the myriad applications of game theory in class, it is easily seen that the the study and utility of game theory traverses multiple disciplines of study. Beyond the application of game theory for the study of human behavior, game theory can also be a powerful tool in […]
Google+’s Ratio Problem
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/25/google-plus-adds-more-women-after-mostly-male-launch/ Social networking websites have quickly become one of the most power tools on the planet. They have helped friends stay in touch over long distances and acted as a source of information for an entire nation of people as they banded together in the face of adversity. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare all […]
Post War: Jobs for Veterans
Ending the war in Iraq is a blessing for the country and also for the brave warriors that have been dedicating their lives for us. Though, the pleasant homecoming veterans are facing difficulties in finding jobs due to the economy hardship. The life experience that they have to go through is completely different. Rescuing mates […]
An Algorithm for Bipartite Matching
In class, we learned about the bipartite matching problem, which involves a graph with vertices that can be split into two distinct subsets, such that every edge in the graph connects a graph in one subset to the other. Given this graph, a (maximum) bipartite matching is a set of edges, such that no two […]
How to Convince a Majority
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/from-sushi-to-tunisia-a-guide-to-swaying-majority-opinion/244589/ In class, our discussion of networks so far has been limited to the basic model of friendship networks in which people are friends or not friends, strong or weak friends, and the implications of these networks. In real life though, these friendship networks do more than just create a bond of friendship between […]
Teenage Friendships
New research from the University of Bristol sheds some light on why teenage friendship networks are constructed in the way that they are. The study asked about 7,000 teenage students between 15 and 17 who their 5 best friends are. They also gave them questionnaires regarding certain friendship qualities, and information was collected about academic […]
An Introspective Look at Memes
An Introspective Look at Memes http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/power-internet-memes/ For those of you who have never been on the internet, a meme is a wide spreading picture/video/concept/joke that is characterized by its rapid rise in popularity and infiltration into popular culture. It’s actually quite amazing how fast certain web content can spread, and while researchers have looked into […]
Google Maps–it’s just one big graph
Anyone who has had the luxury of looking up directions on how to get somewhere on Google Maps has likely ignored or disregarded the intricacies of how such a path is calculated. The entire premise of Google Maps is using a big giant graph with nodes and edges to figure out fastest or shortest way […]
Bullies Gonna Bully
We often here the phrase “there are no innocent bystanders,” and although this may be true, we can see that it is rational to not interfere with bullying by using what we learned in class about game theory. Bullying is a phenomenon that occurs beyond elementary and grade school; in fact twenty-one percent of all […]
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