Social Networks: Effects on interpersonal communication
As technology has advanced throughout history, especially in the last century and a half, communications has become easier with time. There was a day that any form of nonverbal communication had to be through written letters, mailed to the desired recipient. As social networking has begun to dominate the way many people communicate to their […]
Why do all CEO’s get paid about the same?
One would think that each companies unique set of strategic goals would lead to the creation of widely varying CEO compensation packages that directly align to the strategies and goals of each respective company. However, it turns out this is far from the case. Instead large companies CEO’s share very similar salaries and benefit packages […]
Six Degrees of President Obama
“Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names.” – Six Degrees of Separation A very popular move in politics during elections is to abuse the six degrees of separation phenomenon, in which they try to connect any […]
“Everyone Else Has One” Is a Perfectly Good Reason to Buy an iPhone
This article’s main focus is the fact that if your friends are using a certain platform for something, it is probably a smart idea to use the same platform, for example, an iPhone. The author starts by explaining that he was always left out of games because while all of his friends had a Game […]
Will Aliens be Bear Sized?
In a paper titled The Nature of Inhabited Planets and their Inhabitants, author Fergus Simpson argues that the size of aliens in our universe, if aliens even exist, could be predicted. Using Bayes theorem and a variety of different modeling curves to highlight what extraterrestrial life could be like Simpson was able to come to […]
Network Effects in a Large Lecture
Motivation: At the end of class today, Dr. Easley was trying to finish up a thought on “Market for Lemons,” and as one, everyone started rustling around. It struck me that it must be kind of annoying to be teaching and have everyone at lecture in a 700 person class clearly stop respecting what […]
So that’s why Obamacare has a penalty.
This month starts Obamacare’s third sign up period. One of the most controversial parts of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was the individual mandate. The mandate required nearly all Americans to buy health insurance: those who did not, and were not exempt, faced penalties that rose every year (almost $695 per adult, or $2,085 […]
How to find the BAE using BAYES theorem
This Business Insider article aims to explain how to figure out how well a date is going by using Bayes Theorem. In class we learned that Bayes Theorem is a probability “model of decision-making under uncertainty” and this rule can be applied to dating. Sometimes it’s hard to gauge if the date is going well. […]
Is Amateur Advertising More Effective?
We have been learning in class about information cascades and network effects, and how these phenomena can drastically affect our decisions. In modern society, we often decide to base our decisions off of the people around us. If other people think a particular product is cool and hip, then wouldn’t we probably agree with them? […]
Venmo and Network Effects
With our recent discussions about network effects, one of the first things that came to mind was the mobile app Venmo. Venmo is a peer-to-peer payment app, owned by PayPal, that links to your bank account and allows users to send money to other users and allows the users to deposit money from the app […]
« go back — keep looking »