Microsoft Office’s Market Share, and the implications of Network Effects in the Mobile Market
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they would release their entire suite of Microsoft Office products available without advertisements for free on iOS and Android platforms. According to the New York Times, Office currently nets in about 1/3 of Microsoft’s total revenue, amounting to 26 billion US dollars last year. What has caused such to make such […]
Strategic Networking as alternative to advertising on Facebook
Most often when people think of social networks they think of the largest ones, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and advertisers are no exception. If the goal is to have as many people see an ad as possible then these networks are the ideal targets. However, most products do not have a universal audience […]
Calculating Fraudulent Behavior Surrounding Ebola
Professor Jason Kissner indulges a very popular claim surrounding the Ebola catastrophe. He elaborates on why certain claims we have been given by the popular news and the government is not to be immediately accepted as true. The first piece of information Kissner believes false is the fact given to us that Dr. Kent Brantly […]
Information Cascades in the Movement against Youth Vaccinations
The connectivity of the modern world has led to widespread access of information; yet, it seems that despite the ease at which it is possible to gather this information, a large number of information cascades still occur. Specifically, individuals are abandoning their own private information, and instead are relying on the actions of others to […]
How the Low-Fat, Low-Fact Cascade Just Keeps Rolling Along
John Tierney expressed an interesting different perspective on information cascades in his article “How the Low-Fat, Low-Fact Cascade Just Keeps Rolling Along”. An information cascade is defined as a situation in which an individual makes a decision based on observation of others without regard to his/her own private information. It occurs when an individual takes […]
Information Cascades and End of Lecture
At the end of class today, I realized that information cascades work even within the course of our lecture time. After 12:00pm, there are roughly two “states”: Class “Over” (O) or “Not Over” (NO). The signal of a backpack zipper sound indicates that class is over (O), while time being before 12:05 indicates NO. During […]
False Negatives (and Sports Bandwagonning)
Chapter 16 presented many interesting ideas–specifically, many relevant concepts in daily life. Therefore, I could not help but mention a couple different topics of interest related to what we have learned in class: Bayesian probabilities as it ties in with false negatives in medical testing/screening and the influence of the information cascade in sports bandwagoning. […]
Alex from Target and the Power of Information Cascades
The sudden and seemingly inexplicable rise to fame of “Alex from Target” has made major news outlets such as CNN, Washington Post, and New York Magazine. His twitter account currently has 660,000 followers and he was recently invited to appear on “Ellen”. This series of events was triggered simply by a girl who unknowingly took […]
Do Yelp Users Cascade?
One of the most interesting topics covered in this course is the topic of information cascades. These cascades model situations where your own information on something is completely useless. You need to trust the crowd more than you trust yourself, and there isn’t anything that can be done about it. However, what happens if there […]
A Characterization of League of Legends Using Positive and Negative Links and Information Asymmetry
What is League of Legends? It is one of the major multiplayer online battle arena video games that has gained significant popularity in recent years, in which players control a character in the game called a champion, with unique abilities and spells. In its most popular game mode, a team of five players are pitted […]
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