Workers’ Bargaining Power and Income Inequality
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/02/workers-weakened-bargaining-power-fuels-income-inequality In the US NEWS article “The Fall of Unions From Power”, it points out that the union participation rate has reached the lowest point since the Great Depression and it has attributed workers’ decreased bargaining power to decreased participation rate in unions. More importantly, the article points out that the widening gap between the […]
The Bones of Rational Actors and the Nash Equilibrium
This article starts off by being weary of the notion that Iran is a “rational actor”. The western Asian country is characterized as a dying one whose rational interests stem from desperate gambles. Rational actors lie deep beneath Western history, from the likes of Napoleon, the Confederates during the Civil War, and the Germans during […]
ICASA and Auctions
Spectrum auctions are being used by governments to sell the right to transmit signals over specific wavelengths, and ICASA, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, is the latest governmental association to put these auctions into practice. ICASA plans to use the auctions to sell mobile broadband licenses to companies. Spectrum auctions are auctions that […]
Lessons Learned From eBay Bidding
It is every buyer’s dream to be able to win an auction with a bid that is significantly lower than the true value of the item – essentially maximizing the benefit. Networks has taught us that for every type of auction, there is an optimal bidding strategy. However, theory does not always effectively translate into […]
How power affects our faith in people
Three of the top four candidates in the presidential campaign- Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are all powerful people, either as a billionaire in entertainment and real estate, a neurosurgeon or a former corporate chief executive officer. Many people place trust in these powerful candidates, and would vote for them. However, from our […]
Reddit, Microcosm of the Bow-Tie Web
The bow-tie structure (13), has proven to be an effective way for information to spread. Increased reachability has helped many achieve previously impossible goals. In many ways, reddit can be seen as a microcosm of the internet. One of the most popular websites in the world, reddit sees an increasing number of visitors every month, […]
Mario Kart–Game Theory and More
http://williamspaniel.com/2014/10/19/the-game-theory-of-mario-kart-8/ Mario Kart is racing video game. However, it is not that simple–scattered along the course are boxes with question marks on them, which once a player drives through them, provide them with either an offensive or defensive item that will help them get ahead. In this article William Spaniel, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, […]
Moving Networks and Airplane Path Visualizations
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/plane-viz/ In this News Article describing a day of airline traffic it is reminding us how complex our daily air paths are. Data visualizations today have become an easy way to analyze and see large amounts of data in an easily comprehended way. Before we had the technology to track this information but not to […]
Game Theory: Civilization 5
Civilization 5 is a real time strategy game (RTS) that has been around for many years now. Players are pitted against each other or against AI and must build up a civilization from scratch in order to conquer their competitors. Like many of the other blog post about Game Theory, strategies for RTS games can […]
Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question
This article discusses the application of dynamic game theory in evolutionary biology. The study focuses on an animal’s motivation for choosing altruistic strategies even if it means jeopardizing themselves. The prisoner’s dilemma has proved that over the course of a lifetime, an animal’s best strategy is to cooperate rather than defect. One example of the […]