Networks Built by Social Media
In his piece, Social Media, Pretend Friends, and the Lie of False Intimacy, Baer argues that social media gives its users a false impression of closeness to individuals labeled as “friends.” While social media does link people from all around the world of vastly different backgrounds, these “friendships” are merely links between people that would […]
The Network of Deliveries
Last year, Amazon released plans for Prime Air, a delivery option utilizing unmanned drones to deliver packages within 30 minutes. Google also recently announced Project Wing, a similar program intended for longer distances (test flights are in the outback of Australia, vs. Amazon’s planned 10 mile radius). This is accomplished by using a hybrid design […]
Game Theory – Bush Doctrine versus Madman Diplomacy
source: teaching.ust.hk/~sosc200t/student/c.doc The tensions in the Korean peninsula has been constantly ongoing for about half a century. With North Korea’s nuclear armament posing a grave threat to the surrounding countries, the US’s position in the far east seems to be precarious. Since the Bush administration, the US has been employing the Bush Doctrine towards North […]
Braess’s Paradox in Real Life
Our intuitive sense of network traffic says that if we add more capacity from Point A to Point B, the travel time between the two points should decrease. However, this isn’t always that case, as we demonstrated in class with Braess’s Paradox, which is also explained succinctly on Wikipedia. However intriguing as it is, Braess’s […]
Game Theory applied to “Dollar Auctions”
Link: http://www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/Teaching/Sci199_03/dollar_auction_1.pdf I found this academic paper to be very relevant to the concepts relating to game theory and auctions discussed in lecture. The paper describes the process of multiple people betting on a one dollar bill in 5 cent increments. It operates like a simple ascending bid auction, but there is a catch; not […]
The Montague Tunnel Re-Opening: Revisiting Hurricane Sandy’s Effect on New York’s Equilibrium
As a city populated by millions of people, New York contains a vast network of travelers who use public transportation to commute to and from places every day. Perhaps, then, it comes as no surprise that when Hurricane Sandy hit the city back in October 2012 and damaged several structures, certain pathways of travel became […]
The Insightful Network Structure of Disease
Link to article: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8685.long The Human Disease Network is one that has an impact on everybody in society, and therefore has been studied very throughly. Although complicated in its core content, the representation of how diseases spread can be modeled using basic graphs that have been introduced in class. These graphs have helped doctors and […]
Matching in Online Advertisements
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y14/m09/i15/s04 In different sorts of free websites and mobile applications, advertisements have become the standard monetization strategy. In order to maximize the effect that these advertisements have on the person who sees them, prior browsing experience is often used in determining what ad should appear to the viewer. With hundreds of millions of users and […]
Weak Ties, Social Networks, And Your Brand
Intuitively, one would think that our strong ties (our close friends, people we really know) are typically the best sources for new information and ideas. On the contrary, it has been suggested that in fact, our weak ties (acquaintances) are the bridges to the new ideas and information we thought we would receive from out […]
Illegal Intermediates in the iPhone 6 Market
The iPhone 6 was finally released for sale in the United States this past week. As expected, thousands of people lined up on the streets in order to have the chance to be the first to own the newest release from Apple. Most are purchasing the phone for themselves or for family members, but it […]