Fame in the Internet Age: Can anyone be famous?
According to psychological research, fame is an ever more important value among youth. Modern western culture reaffirms this idea through a new kind of fame that is still in its infancy stage, namely “Internet Fame”. One domain of internet revolves a number of Youtube stars who have built fan-bases well in the millions; for example, […]
Breaking the Bank
Natalia Rigol, a PhD candidate in economics at MIT, conducted a pilot project in India to determine if community information can be used to break the cycle of poverty in developing countries. Banks in countries with large income inequalities, such as India, do not lend money to low income individuals because they do not have […]
Social Media as a News Filter
Resources: http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2009/sep/18/oxford-social-media-convention-2009-journalism-blogs http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/middleeast/beirut-lebanon-attacks-paris.html?_r=0 Following the horrific acts of terrorism this past week, there was an outpouring of support for Paris throughout the world. Countries lit their national monuments in the colors of the French flag and presidents gave speeches expressing their countries’ sorrow and solidarity in the aftermath of the tragedy. However, Paris was not the […]
How Bayes’ Rule Can Be Applied to the 2016 Presidential Election
Political science is a topic that focuses on the fundamentals of history involving systems of government and analyzing political activity and behavior. There’s an understandable uncertainty that comes from political elections, especially in democratic governments and the 2016 Presidential Election for the United States is no exception. A person may think that an election spans […]
Political Diversity on Facebook
http://cn.cnstudiodev.com/uploads/document_attachment/attachment/681/science_facebook_filter_bubble_may2015.pdf This article covers a study performed on Facebook in which the authors set out to determine how exposed people who consider themselves a part of one political party in American are to articles that support ideals of the other party. In particular, how often did liberals read articles aligned with conservative ideas, and vice […]
How Accurate are Prediction Markets?
In class recently we have been talking about prediction markets, which use the aggregate information provided by many betters and their beliefs to predict the outcome of events. A very simple example of such a market is a horse race. Betters come to the race with some belief about who will win, bet some proportion […]
Can Apple’s New Tablet Replace Laptops in the Workplace?
Apple is once again entering a market they have shown so much success with by introducing the new iPad Pro. However, despite the “Pro” title, the device is still not at the point where it can replace a work laptop in terms of practicality and functionality. To enter the market with hopes of success, Apple […]
The search for lost objects
Bayesian analysis provides a decision framework for providing inference that incorporates past information about a parameter of interest. One application of Bayesian statistics is the Bayesian search model, which uses Bayes’ theorem to locate lost objects. Analysts at Metron looked into this as a possibility for locating Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 – their approach and […]
Network Effects on Instant Messaging Apps
Before smartphones have become popular and affordable, network effects played a big role when deciding which mobile carrier to go with. In my home country, sending texts is only free if both parties are on the same carrier. Therefore, other than considering the direct benefits of choosing one carrier over another (network coverage, costs of […]
Network effects on market competition: The Case of Hydrox
In class, we learned about the effects a network has on the stability of a product. The fraction of the population can be represented as value z. There exist certain values of z which are in equilibrium. The value of z moves towards stable equilibria and away from unstable equilibria. There are external forces in […]
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