Republicans take power from Obama
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week, the GOP regained control of the senate and lengthened their lead in the house of representatives. Republicans haven’t controlled both since 2006. With this transfer of power, republicans have the opportunity to completely block, or at least stall, Obama’s plans in his last […]
Why Twitter Needs More Users
A recent article in the online news source CIO Today entitled “Wall Street Thinks Twitter Needs More Tweeters” discusses the recent successes and downfalls of the social-networking platform Twitter. Even though Twitter generated more ad sales than expected in the last quarter, the rate of user growth has stagnated. According to the article, “analysts and […]
Cascade to Revolution
Digital technology and social media can play a profound role in initiating a revolution, as observed with the Arab Spring in 2010. Academics, politicians, and citizens alike have all studied this effect, to varying degrees of rigor. One common insight is that of an information cascade as a model for revolution in the Arab Spring. […]
Ant Mills: The Deadly Cascade
In Chapter 16 we read about information cascades, where people base their decisions on the decisions made by those before them. This often happens because it is the logical thing to do; people aren’t just blindly copying previous decisions, but rather reacting accordingly to a situation created by those previous decisions. In this sense, ignoring […]
Information Networks Can Reinvent Recruiting
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/graph-databases-recruiting/ As if recruiting was not stressful enough for job applicants, graph databases are on pace to change the way applicants are judged. “How Graph Databases Can Reinvent Recruiting” discusses the new concept of classifying candidates based on their relationships with others, their background, specific skills and even their hobbies and interests. The idea […]
Market Movements and Information Cascades
Major US indexes have risen to record highs today in response to a positive outlook triggered by rising earnings and anticipation of the central bank rising rates in Europe. The Dow climbed nearly 70 basis points today to close at a record high of 17555, recording a gain of 5.9% since the beginning of the […]
Network Theory used to Analyze Wars and Conflict in the World
The article “Network Theory Reveals the Hidden Link Between Trade and Military Alliances That Leads to Conflict-Free Stability” by the MIT Technology Review discusses the links between countries to understand how alliances and trade agreements affect conflict between nations. These models were created to see if there was any possible network where its perfect-stability could […]
Using Social Networks to Respond to Emergencies
The article “Social Networks Are Changing How We Respond to Emergencies” explains how social networks have not only changed the way people communicate with each other and access information on a daily basis, but have also changed the way people can respond to emergency situations. Recently, Facebook introduced a new feature called “Safety Check” which […]
Viral Marketing: Networks
Whenever I see my friends post up statuses regarding a restaurant or exhibition they went to, I tend to trust their judgment depending on how close a friend he or she is. In class, we discuss about information cascade, which occurs when people tend to abandon their own information and follow the crowd or another […]
Vanishing Flights Found Using Bayes’ Theorem?
March 8th, 2014 a Malaysian Flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia to Beijing Capital International Airport, People’s Republic of China. Shortly after it took off, connection between the air traffic control station and the flight 370 was lost. After several months of searching, we are still unable to find where it may have disappeared. As […]
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