Single Transferable Vote (STV) in the Animal (and Human) Kingdom
In many countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, major elections (e.g. selecting electors for the Electoral College) use a simple first-past-the-post form of voting in which the winner is decided by whomever receives a plurality of votes. For example, in the United States Presidential Election, the candidate who receives a simple […]
How to Spoil the Elections
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/spoil-proofing-elections http://faculty.georgetown.edu/kingch/Electoral_Systems.htm http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepoliticalsystem/a/electcollege_2.htm Concerning the presidential elections, the United States’ voting system revolves around a method called plurality voting. This system dictates that voters place a vote for one candidate and the candidate collecting the most votes wins in the end. Compared to a majority vote, a candidate is not required to receive more […]
Modeling the spread of epidemics using a Poisson process
Recently the focus of lectures has covered modeling the spread of epidemics, and we introduced the basic SIR modeling. Here I found this interesting idea of modeling the epidemics using a Poisson process, a statistical approach. The major strength of the Poisson process is that its simple framework means it can be used to extract important […]
Ending the Ebola Epidemic
As we have studied recently, we have attempted to describe and model how diseases and epidemics spread about. Additionally, we have studied how and why they spread and how much longer the epidemic travels before there are no cases whatsoever. We described this using the reproductive number R, which is the probability the disease transmits, […]
Dating and the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-ali-binazir/how-to-date-dating-and-ga_b_561152.html In this article, Binazir attempts to apply game theory to the topic of dating. It does this by representing a relationship with the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, where each person can either “cooperate” or “defect”. In the prisoner’s dilemma, two players each make one of two decisions: either admit that the other person is guilty, […]
Trendsetters and Information Cascades
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/majority-illusion/ In this article, a town of people is presented as a network, showing each person’s opinion on baseball caps, as well as who else in the town they know. Each person is then asked whether or not they think the majority of people in the town think baseball caps are trendy. Each person makes […]
Pandemics and Plagues
This Month in Plauges: http://www.popsci.com/month-in-plagues-dengue-fever-in-hawaii-gene-drive-mosquitoes-and-more Pandemic 2: http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Pandemic-2.html Recently in class the topic of epidemics, as a network effect, has been discussed. Covering both simplified tree models and custom graph models, we’ve investigated the effects contact and transmissibility of a disease. Realistically, even the more complicated models we’ve discussed in class are a bit simplified. […]
Easy Ways to Prevent a Flu Epidemic
Every year, flu season comes around and we brace ourselves for another round of coughs, sneezes, fevers, and nausea. At Cornell, we are especially susceptible to the spread of diseases because we come in close contact with a variety of people everyday. During lecture, we talked about the basic reproductive number Ro. If Ro>1, the […]
The Short-sellers are Innocent.
When the a company stock value plummets, upset shareholders and the distressed company often hunt for scapegoats. And a perfect scapegoat? The short-seller. After all, the company has every right and reason to blame short-sellers, right? Those scheming, malicious jerks–they bet against the company by buying high and selling low–and therefore must just be rooting […]
Social Networks and Dreams
For many years, the small world phenomenon, or the “six degrees of separation” has astounded and fascinated researchers and scientists due to its ability to emphasize how rich and interconnected social networks really are. The phenomenon was experimented by a social psychologist named Stanley Milgram in 1967. Milgram asked random individuals across the United States […]
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