Playing Poker with Game Theory
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_wilkinson http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/multitable/mtt_strategy/Poker_Game_Theory.html In the year 2000 Chris Ferguson won over 1 million dollars in a poker tournament, he was the first person ever to do so. The first article sited above explains how Ferguson, a UCLA graduate student at the time, decided that he would apply his knowledge of game theory to poker to see […]
Game theory explains the spread of trends better than the epidemic theory
The ‘epidemic’ theory is typically used to explain the spread of a trend – stating that increased exposure to a trend will mean that more people will adopt it. When a trend hits a node that has many connections, then the trend will explode, or ‘go viral’. However, theoretical research in game theory has shown […]
Cooperating Rats
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008483 It is a common attitude amongst humans that we are far smarter than any other creatures in the animal kingdom. However, blinded by our big brains and bigger egos, may underestimate the intelligence of other critters. A study published in January, 2010 shows that if we define intelligence not in terms of communication but in […]
Facebook SmartLists
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/facebooks-smart-lists-real-friends-again/ This article talks about the recent new additional features that Facebook has implemented on their site. It is mainly about the new Smart List feature how that is the “most important change to the service since the platform.” I picked this article because I wanted to use this article and understand and explain it […]
Game Theory in the Vote for Palestinian Statehood
In the wake of the 2011 United Nations General Assembly, no other issue dominates the agenda more than the vote for Palestinian statehood. From September 21st to the 27th, UN member nations will meet in New York to decide if Palestine will indeed become a recognized state. That would change the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dramatically, as […]
How the Internet Facilitates Information Linkage Graphs
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/headed-to-shanksville-pa/ For my blog post I decided to talk about Information Linkage Graphs, from Chapter 2, and take an example from the news and apply that to it, specifically in a unique situation that contrasts times before and after social networking on the Internet became mainstreamed. Information Linkage Graphs are key for examining who is […]
Stressful Social Networking -> Early Death?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/egalitarian-hyraxes/#more-70342 Researchers have made a couple of interesting observations about the social interactions and networking of rock hyraxes, a small herbivorous mammal that lives in Africa and the Middle East. What they have essentially discovered is that having a larger social network leads to better health and longer life for these animals, but only if […]
Math’s Answer to Terror
This article discusses the use of Game Theory on the decisions of the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organization. According to the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre, the LeT has carried out over 100 attacks since 2004. These attacks have contributed to the death of over 700 humans. Recently, LeT was accused of carrying out the 2008 attacks in […]
Winning from Two Losing Games
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/25/science/paradox-in-game-theory-losing-strategy-that-wins.html?scp=1&sq=Paradox%20in%20Game%20Theory:%20Losing%20Strategy%20That%20Wins&st=cse&pagewanted=1 In the article, it discusses the newly-discovered (15 years ago) paradox discovered by Parrondo that by carefully choosing a strategy, it is able to in the long run win money with two games that, played independently, always lose money in the long run. First, consider two games, A and B. In game A, there […]
Logic in Politics?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/opinion/veto-a-state-lose-an-ally.html?_r=4&emc=eta1 As we learned in class, complex political relationships can sometimes be modeled as simple two player games. The Palestinian Authority’s (P.A.) bid for statehood to the United Nations has been in recent headlines, and has the potential to change Palestine’s relationship with not only Israel, but the rest of the world, including the United […]
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