Google Starts Integrating Facebook comments into PageRank formula.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/google-starts-indexing-facebook-comments-ajaxjavascript-content/4978 In a previous blog post written by an anonymous student, it is stated that Microsoft and Facebook have teamed up to help Microsoft’s Bing search engine count comments made when using Facebook’s comment dialog on other sites. It is said that this is a move aimed at making Bing’s “search engine optimization” strategy better […]
StumbleUpon, the closet supersite
Social Media is interesting in that almost anything can go “viral” with the right marketing strategy and tactics. Some of these big fads include YouTube’s Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” videos and Jenna Marbles’ videos. Social media marketing and sharing is dominated mostly by Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, along with others […]
Direction, Not precision.
Most rational people know not to let a statistic make decisions for them. For example, 90% chance of rain tomorrow doesn’t actually mean that it is definitely going to rain. Adding class where 90% of students get an A doesn’t mean you should stop attending class and stop doing all homework. However, for some reason, […]
The Ultimatum Game
http://this.sott.net/articles/show/214842-Westerners-vs-the-World-We-are-the-WEIRD-ones In class we discussed the topic of network exchange and bargaining. One specific experiment is the Ultimatum Game, in which two people must divide ten dollars. One person proposes how much he keeps for himself, and how much he gives to the other person. The other person then approves or rejects the proposal; if […]
The College Process
As a high school graduate, I couldn’t imagine that I would ever think about the college process again, but I must admit that being a spectator isn’t so bad. As I see all of the current high school seniors sending in their early college applications this week, I can’t help but reminisce about my experience […]
Greece, Europe and the Rest of the World
European governments have been struggling with how to deal with the Greece debt crisis. They have many options to consider both short term, long term, financially, and politically, which makes there decisions very complex, but they can still be analyzed using game theory. To simplify the analysis of this game, I’ll use only two players, […]
PageRank and Social Media: A New Era of Search?
In class, we learned about the basics of Google’s PageRank algorithm and how it assigns a ranking to web pages based on, amongst other factors, the number of pages that link to a certain page and the relative ‘importance’ of those links. With the advent of social media giants like Facebook, a new era of […]
Decision Making in Basketball
I have played and loved the sport of basketball since I was born, and I have been lucky enough to play for some great coaches. My coaches taught me how to play the game ‘the right way’ and make smart decisions with the ball. For basketball junkies and players who have learned the game, it […]
Facebook Users Switching Loyalties
For the past several years many considered Facebook to be a monopoly in the social networking arena. However, most recently new networking sites, such as Google Plus are releasing tools that are on par to compete with the Facebook giant, causing many of Facebook’s users to perhaps switch their loyalty to sites like Google Plus. […]
The accuracy of a game theory analysis of baseball
Baseball has long been considered America’s national pastime. On the surface it is a team sport: nine players playing for each team at any given point of the game, with even more players waiting to be substituted in to catalyze a swing in momentum or retain a late game lead. But beneath the surface the […]
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