Suicide and Friendships: The Clustering Coefficient
On Page 45 of Networks, Crowds, and Markets, Professor Easley refers to a study by Bearman and Moody where the two researchers found that teenage girls with a low clustering coefficient has a higher rate of suicidal thoughts than others. The suicide rate of adolescents in the US has been rising dramatically in the past decade. […]
Solving Real Life Problems with Game Theory
Game theory is the study of situations where one person’s success is based on the choices of others. It is a subject of tremendous interest to economists, businessmen, policy makers and students in this course. Game theory principles can carry so much weight that, in fact, new computer programs are using it to make remarkable […]
The use of game theory in modelling software
This article discusses the rise of software used to harness game theory to analytically predict the outcomes of political and economic situations. It firstly discusses software invented by a man named Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, an academic at New York University, and how he’s applied it to political situations ranging from the recent Egyptian upheaval […]
Can game theory save the UN climate talks?
Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/06/game-theory-un-climate-talks The above article discusses the difficulty that the UN is having in their talks about global climate change. Basically, the issue right now is that no country wants to spend money to make drastic changes in their CO2 emissions because no other countries are doing it. This is the game. Each country thinks, […]
Twitter – Changing the Graph of Social Networking
Unlike the social networking sites preceding it, the open and asymmetric nature of Twitter has created a unique social experience. Before the emergence of Twitter, relationships in social networks were largely bilateral. In other words, if someone requested to be your friend, you would be their friend as well. Twitter handles relationship requests asymmetrically. Both […]
Networks and Netflix
Recently, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix will be branching into two separate companies. Netflix will now consist solely of the instant streaming online, and the new company Qwikster will handle the DVD mailing aspect of the current Netflix. This split, coupled with a price increase, has left many consumers unhappy and angry. […]
Klout: Measuring Influence Over Social Networking Media
Posted just yesterday on TechCrunch.com, Klout, a startup company that measures social influence on Twitter, Facebook,LinkedIn, YouTube, and Foursquare, is now integrating Google+ into their lineup of supported websites. A little background information about Klout according to TechCruch: … Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the […]
Can you get an iPad 2 for $50? For real?
Have you ever seen the banner ad saying “get an iPad 2 for only $50!” I always wondered how can an iPad whose retail price is over $700 can be sold at a price which is almost 90% cheaper than the retail price. Moreover, the left over time is less than a minute so it […]
Need to find a subtenant for you apartment? You may want to reconsider the asking price you posted…
We have all seen vendors pricing their goods at such prices as $9.99 instead $10.Most people think, “Hah, you can’t fool me with those 99 cents!” Well, it turns out that in most cases, consumers are, in fact deceived. The trick is not simply making the price appear smaller, but rather, it is in altering […]
Game theory in UN climate talks
The link below is to The Guardian newspaper’s Environment blog website. The post is by John Vidal, the Environment editor. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/06/game-theory-un-climate-talks This post is an example of an important application of game theory- game theory in political decision making. It is enriching for we who have studied some basic game theory to see how it […]
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