Probability in Criminal Justice
Criminal justice has come a long way since the days of pens and quills, when a man’s fate could be decided on a whim by a judge’s intuition. With the development of forensics, recorded media, and powerful background checking techniques, today’s courts emphasize facts above all else. Of course, solid evidence is always the best […]
Network effects and the performance of social media companies
Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/business/Sites-Like-Groupon-and-Facebook-Disappoint-Investors.html?pagewanted=all Over the past year, the stock price for many social media companies did not fare well in the market. Companies like Zynga and Groupon saw their stock prices decrease over 70%, and even the best performing social media sites like Yelp and LinkedIn saw a decline in stock prices recently. This is no different […]
Post 2 – Election and Information Effects
Our president for the next term was just chosen, and the internet is full of news, coverage and data on the election. One interesting article was on the spread and conveyance of information and how it effects voters’ decisions. This article (http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/bartels2.pdf) makes a variety of arguments that can be connected to what we learned […]
iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire HD
Sources: http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/07/technology/mobile/tablets-ipad-mini-nexus-kindle-fire/index.html http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411313,00.asp These articles provide a fairly in depth comparison between Apple’s new iPad Mini, the Google Nexus 7, and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. Unlike the rest of the Apple collection, this new mini’s screen lacks its usual “crystal clarity” and its processor “easily fall[s]” to the Nexus 7. For multi-taskers, the Android […]
How Reddit Beat Digg
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/07/13/facebook-didnt-kill-digg-reddit-did/ While Professor Kleinberg’s and Professor Tardos’ lectures are always interesting, the sight of students gazing at their laptop screens and smartphones instead of paying attention is nothing to be surprised about. More often than not, they are browsing Facebook or Reddit. But a few years ago, it would have been quite different. Instead of […]
Network Effects in Office Suites
Source: http://www18.georgetown.edu/data/people/maccartm/publication-43095.pdf This paper talks about the value of having a single, open standard for document formats in office suite programs. It also talks about some of the history of how the landscape of office suite programs became what it is today. I will mostly focus on the history aspect in this post. There […]
League of Legends
League of Legends is a massively multiplayer online video game played by millions of people around the world. Each player has a choice of using a wide array of over 100 characters to use in any match. These characters could both be bought with real or in game money. Each character also comes with a […]
Information Cascade Effect on Netflix Stock Price
An article in The Economist offers an interesting perspective on the volatility of Netflix stock. Back in 2011, Netflix’s stock took a sharp drop in a period of just 3 months. However, the author brings up the point that this sharp drop has nothing to do with Netflix itself, but has everything to do with […]
the long lines of information
This website gives an interesting insight into the large chunk of our lives we devote to waiting for things: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting-in-line-is-torture.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 The article comments on the factors such as speed, time ratios and fairness that play a large role in how we feel while waiting in line and the choices we make in response to such […]
Social Media and the Recent Election
Social media is the perfect environment to study information cascades and its effects upon decision-making. In a recent study published in the Nature science journal, researchers describe the effects of advertisement in encouraging people to vote. The study shows that young people, who are both more likely to vote democratically and use facebook, are more […]
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