FireChat, Communicating Completely Off the Grid
In our modern, highly connected lives, we take for granted that we should always be able to type a text message and have it instantly be delivered to its intended recipient. But we all have times when we are faced with ridiculous roaming charges, overpriced international data plans, or simply spotty coverage at the places to […]
Power of Social Networking
The social network is great way in the field of job search and recruitment because it offers opportunities to connect and network easily with other people. According to the Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Study, 76 percent of job seekers found their position through Facebook. Greater than 90% of employers also use social networking websites to […]
The relationship between traffic and roads
It is quite intuitive that building more roads is a way to solve traffic jam problems. As traffic flow can be separated into many different roads, there will be fewer cars in each of them. However, during the studying of modeling network traffic using game theory, we encountered a case where building an extra road might […]
Predicting the result of the Greek Debt Crisis
The current debt crisis in Greece can be modeled with a game. In this game, Greece has the option of offering a plan to the rest of the Eurozone or defaulting. Then the rest of the Eurozone can either accept or reject the plan or do nothing if Greece defaults. Since Greece has zero chance […]
App Store searching and how it can be better
Every time you search for a new app on your iPhone or iPad’s App Store, what happens behind the scenes is that Apple takes your search terms, and then compares it with the titles and keywords of the apps found within the App Store. Relevant apps are then sorted through a secret algorithm that gives […]
The Small-World Phenomenon in Scale-Free Networks
In class we discussed the small-world phenomenon, also known as the “six degrees of separation,” which is the fact that groups in a social network can be connected by very short paths. In particular, Chapter 20 of the book describes a model that supports the small-world phenomenon. This model, known as the Watts-Strogatz model, proposes […]
PageRank: Detecting Attraction in a Conversation
In 2011, the Q&A web service Piazza quickly earns its popularity in over 330 schools and among tens and thousands of students. Piazza twists homework help site with social networking, providing an online forum for classmates to trade their knowledge. However, an active forum may not always guarantee an enjoyable learning experience. Suppose that you […]
Winners Beware
A new mobile marketplace called iBuySell is introducing the concept of rapid-fire sales to online auctions. In contrast to the more traditional ascending-bid auctions, where bidders gradually raise the sale price of an item from an established minimum until only one bidder remains at the final sale price, iBuySell will consist of descending-bid auctions where […]
A Game-Theoretic Approach to Selecting Vice-Presidential Nominees
As we are in the midst of heated Republican and Democratic presidential debates, it seems fitting to examine the results of this research paper on electoral competition strategies that was conducted earlier this year. In it, researchers Thomas P Krumel Jr and Ali Enami discuss the rationale behind […]
Game Theory and the Kidney Exchange
We all know game theory is very applicable in the real world. We do these types of negotiations all the time but who would have thought that you could apply the theory of matching markets to kidney transplants? Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth did just that. This economist applied his understanding of matching markets to […]
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