How Understanding Network Effects is Saving World of Warcraft
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/09/world-of-warcraft-subscriber-numbers/ http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/09/1-million-people-signed-up-for-the-wow-annual-pass/ http://inanage.com/2012/03/09/scroll-of-ridiculous-value/ World of Warcraft is a popular massive multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG) which boasts over 10 millions players. Since it’s inception in 2004 it has grown into the most played MMORPG in the world with the number of subscribers reaching an all time high in 2010 at 12 million. But since […]
Protests: The European Threshold
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/world/europe/workers-in-southern-europe-synchronize-anti-austerity-strikes.html?hp&_r=0 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324556304578118263611154772.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories Europe has been in turmoil ever since the Euro started declining. The decline of the Euro has obviously affected families, business, markets, and laborers. Spanish and Portuguese workers felt the pain of the economy and decided to protest. While the Portuguese and Spanish were striking, the Greeks and Italians decided to […]
Solving the Monty Hall Problem
The premise of the Monty Hall problem is simple. You are on a game show, and the host shows you three doors labeled A, B, and C. One door has a car hidden behind it, whereas the other two has a goat each. Obviously, you want to pick the one with the car. The host […]
Swarm Intelligence
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2119412/How-make-ants-commit-suicide-going-spiral-death-doesnt-ant-iclock-wise.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/28/ant-mill-swarm-suicide_n_1386017.html Beekman M., et al. Biological Foundations of Swarm Intelligence. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-74089-6_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA37cb10WMU – Swarming ant mill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkfHdEOgh5Q – Simulation with zerglings Ants are a fascinating species, particularly in the way they navigate and forage for food. Instead of relying on conventional means of observation and memory to navigate its way through thick […]
Spread of the fake information on the Internet
Several days ago, hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of United States. Due to the fast development of social media now, people could get newest update about hurricane Sandy. However as mentioned in the article, quite a few people posted fake pictures and misleading updates about the hurricane. (http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/hurricane-sandy-twitter-buzzfeed-fake_b48868) And the fake information spread really […]
Decline of Rural Chinese Workers
It’s interesting to see how China has continued to increase grain output year after year even though farmland has been steadily lost to urbanization and many rural workers have opted to leave their jobs in order to move away to new, urban places. What are these workers thinking? Why are they moving away to other […]
Brand Ambassadors
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/business/at-colleges-the-marketers-are-everywhere.html?pagewanted=all At college, students explore many things: interests, friendships, beliefs, and brands. While students may cling to some brands from their pre-college years, often it is in college that students pick brands that they well may pick for the rest of their lives. As a result, for companies it is crucial to sway college students […]
Cascading Information and the Arab Spring
http://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/designprocess/files/2012/08/TheNational_FacebookandTwitterKeytoArabSpringUprising.pdf http://www.ssrresourcecentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Anderson-Demystifying-the-Arab-Spring.pdf The Arab Spring is an ongoing process of revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. This series of revolutions has some very modern characteristics, such as the extensive use of social media and the Internet in disseminating information. One question which has been asked is why so many events have occurred […]
« go back