Crowdfunding Cascades
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project using donations from a large number of people, instead of borrowing from banks. Popular websites for crowdfunding include Indiegogo and Kickstarter. The practice has become increasingly popular, especially for individuals who may not have the ability to apply for large loans otherwise. Usually, as an incentive to donate, […]
Using Graph Theory to Analyze the Spread of Tuberculosis in South Africa
In class, we have discussed graph theory and more recently, the small world phenomenon or “six degrees of separation” notion that every person in this world is connected to another person in six or fewer relationships. With the current widespread talk of the Ebola virus, it interesting to note how the concepts of graph theory […]
Search Engine Optimization Rap
While I was looking for some sort of scholarly article for this blog post, I happened across an entertaining YouTube video that related perfectly to what we’ve been discussing in class. In the video, the “SEO Rapper” talks about search engine optimization and PageRank: a Google-developed method for determining the importance of a website. The […]
New Stocks and Market Crashes: The Pros and Cons of Information Cascades
Information cascades can both jump-start a public stock or product and cause a stock’s value to plummet or even crash a market. The former is relatively easy to control and take advantage of – firms manipulate this phenomenon all the time (1). The latter, however, can have runaway destructive abilities, and most certainly played a […]
Boston Globe Gubernatorial Endorsement – October 26, 2014
Three days ago, the Boston Globe editorial staff released an article endorsing a Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate for the first time in 20 years. This time, the typically liberal newspaper nominated Republican candidate Charlie Baker. Even though Baker has already been reported up in the polls by a widely reported 3 points as of October 24, […]
Google’s fight against SEO
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238040 Since its inception, Google has been in a battle against websites that try to game their PageRank algorithm to appear higher in search results. PageRank is Google’s attempt at quantifying the importance of websites, so obviously, websites that game the algorithm would appear higher than their “true” importance would suggest, something Google doesn’t want. […]
Refine the Network, Revolutionize Medicine
Theranos is a company built on the idea that the current network for medical testing is too large and inefficient. The size problem lies not in the fact that the network is widespread, but more that the connections are not direct enough, thus increasing the margin for error. To better visualize the scenario, imagine this […]
The Asch Conformity Experiment
Links: http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html In class we talked about how being in a network or social group affects individual decision making. We say that the person has the choice to make their own decisions and evaluate a situation alone or a person can abide by the groups majority decision and opinion even when it conflicts with their […]
Network Theory and Game Theory in Alliances
In a study by Matthew Jackson and Stephen Nei of Stanford Univeristy, the two men used network theory and game theory to analyze the stability of a network of countries that form a military coalition. They based their findings on networks that only consist of military links and networks that consist of both military and […]
Abstractions up for auctions
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manchester-united-city-dad-auctions-4489708 While I am certain that this isn’t the first case of this, but something that isn’t a physical object has been put in monetary auction. In this case, it is this man’s son’s “future football love.” Depending on who wins the auction, he will raise the child to be a fan of the respective […]
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