A model of a trust-based recommendation system on a social network
Introduction: For this blog assignment, I summarized an interesting academic paper I found using Google Scholar. I start by providing basic information about the paper, then state why I found it interesting, and proceed to note the basic idea discussed, the assumptions considered, and finally provide an overview. Title: A model of a trust-based recommendation […]
Information Cascades and politics
The link below is to The Economist newspaper’s “Democracy in America” blog website. The post is by a correspondent, M.S. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/10/mass-movements In this Economist blog, correspondents share their opinions on American politics and policy. The blog post is titled “Information Cascades,” something we have recently learned about in class, and the writer M.S. shares some […]
A Brief History of PageRanking as it Applies to Google
http://technicallyeasy.net/2011/07/how-important-is-googles-pagerank/ As discussed in class, Google is at the forefront of the establishment and proper implementation of the PageRank algorithm. We learned how pages both act as hubs and authorities in some cases and how certain pages can act as heavy endorsements for other pages, even without actually choosing to do it. A page that […]
Tipping points in software adoption and the default option
A landmark event has recently occurred in the ponderous shuffle of the global internet browser market – how recently depends on whose statistics one trusts – but no matter what, the once unassailable bulk that is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has finally lost its outright majority, dipping just under 50% usage worldwide. For a few years […]
Memory susceptible to herd behavior due to social influences
http://technorati.com/women/article/group-think-peer-pressure-shown-to/ Inaccurate memories can sometimes be blamed on social pressures and interpersonal influences. Due to “herd behavior” of the brain, one may alter recollections of past events after hearing accounts or opinions provided by other people in order to fit the consensus of the group. Two types of memory conformity reflect different cognitive processes, but […]
The Evolution of Online Advertising
Have you ever thought about how advertising has changed over the years? Just a few years ago, a company would have to invest millions of dollars in TV and radio advertising in the hopes that their commercials would reach the right audience and translate into sales and profit. However, this all dramatically changed with the […]
google’s new advertising transparency
link to article- http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/11/google-ad-transparency-target/ Google is a multi-billion dollar search engine that makes most of its money from advertising. Google uses various methods to track people’s interests in order to target advertising to individuals. This particular article discusses google’s recent move to make their advertising targeting more transparent. This decision is invoked by user’s feeling […]
The Dating Auction
Source: http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/10/07/english-vs-dutch-auction-dating-strategies This article considers dating as if it were an auction, discussing different methods. In this theoretical auction, the buyer is the person seeking a mate or love, and the “prize” or “item” is the mate, or potentially, a spouse. The two approaches that are discussed are the English auction method and the Dutch […]
The Business Bowtie
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20111030055925/147_most_powerful_companies In lecture, we talked about the internet and how its organizational structure can be represented in the form of a theoretical “bowtie.” The left “bow” represents something less than a quarter of all webpages (or nodes). This part of the symbolic representation is made up of “origination” pages that allow web-users to arrive at […]
Bayes’ Theorem in the Courtroom
Using Bayes’ Theorem and other statistical calculations as evidence for court trials has been a very controversial issue. The current ruling is that statistically based conclusions and evidence are not permitted. Bayes’ Theorem is a method of probability that determines the probability of an outcome and could therefore be used in many court cases to […]
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