Spotify’s Predictive Personalization
In the eight years since it’s founding in 2006, Spotify has grown rapidly to become the 658th most popular website globally [1] and now services users around the world. It was one of the first music providers to allow its users to play songs of their choice, entirely for free. This novel approach secured Spotify […]
Game Theory with Golden Balls!?!?
Golden Balls is a British TV game show in which contestants compete/work together for a pool of money. At the end of the game, there are only two contestants left and they have to decide whether to split the pot of money or steal it. If both players decide to split, then the pool of […]
Networks in Ponzi Schemes
Article: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/06/akron-based_ponzi_scheme_took.html Two men from Northeast Ohio have been accused of organizing a Ponzi scheme that took over $20 million. The two allegedly created a fake company that bought and sold petroleum. Their supposed business plan was buying discounted oil and selling it for a profit. The profit would then be passed on to their […]
Studying Networks of Language Families
Language evolution and how languages are connected to one another are commonly studied by focusing mainly on cognates between the two languages (cognates are words in different languages that have the same linguistic derivations as one another). However, one flaw in this method is that most words have evolved very quickly and are unable to […]
Twitter, Instagram, Uber: Small Ideas Gaining Value Through Network Effects
Small Ideas + Network Effects = Huge Value How can one use Twitter? To type up to 140 characters. What about Instagram? To display pictures. WhatsApp? To send messages. And Uber? To get rides. By illustrating the relatively simple purposes of today’s popular applications, and by analyzing the common misconception that people have in thinking that […]
A Structural Balanced Network in Real Life
“Bay Bridge’s troubled China Connection – How Caltrans’ choice of an inexperienced company left structural doubts and cost taxpayers” by Charles Piller. In this article, it talks about the major issue Caltrans faced regarding its Bay Bridge project. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. A […]
The Prisoner’s Dilemma in the Real World
The concept of “the prisoners dilemma” was familiar to many of us, even before it was recently introduced in class. It is a simple and interesting way to begin thinking about game theory and how people interact. It highlights important concepts such as dominant strategies, payoffs, and nash equilibrium. It can also be extended to […]
Networks and the 2008 Financial Crisis
We are at 6th anniversary of the 2008 financial bust that rocked the world economy. The September 15th, 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers is for many the defining moment of the crisis. This is thus a particularly apt time to look at some of the structure underlying the crisis. In his work : Financial Crisis and […]
Why Russia Can Invade Ukraine
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991 there were many in both NATO and the Eastern Bloc who believed that there could finally be peace between the two sides. For almost twenty years this was true. However, beginning with the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, and now in the Ukraine conflict, relations between Russia and NATO […]
Analysis of relationship between North and South through game theory
North Korea’s diplomatic behaviors often tend to be irrational, and highly conducted in an unexpected ways that make other countries hard to comprehend. Their inconsistent actions include abrupt withdrawal of treaties (ex. Non proliferation Treaty), sudden missile tests against neighboring countries such as Japan or South Korea, their occasional positive engagement with those countries, but […]
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