Game Theory and Prisoner’s Dilemma in Nature
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150212-game-theory-calls-cooperation-into-question/ The long-held belief that cooperation is beneficial to the survival of individuals in nature has been brought into question by physicist Freeman Dyson and computer scientist William Press. They have used the prisoner’s dilemma to explain how cooperation in nature works. Selfish strategies that benefit an individual would seem to aid in survival of […]
Amazon Recommendations: Ranking Items & Matching Buyers
Reference article: http://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/customer-experience/recommendation-engines-how-amazon-and-netflix-are-winning-the-personalization-battle/ Personalization of recommendations is extremely important in the e-commerce industry. According to the article linked above, recommendations are responsible for roughly 35% of sales. The goal is to show the relevant items and at the right times, and expose the customers to products they otherwise would not have discovered. In class we […]
The economics of online advertising
The normal economics of supply and demand do not seem to adhere to strongly towards the media market. TV Market: In the television market, there is always a constraint of supply. There is a limited number of hours that are dedicated to advertising, and thus, the price of advertising has steadily increased over the years. […]
Semantic Networks and Word Associations
Both in class and in the textbook, we have learned about the concept of information networks. While reading Chapter 13, I was particularly interested in the idea of a semantic network, described by the textbook as a type of information network where “nodes literally represent concepts, and edges represent some kind of logical or perceived […]
Braess’s Paradox Applied to the Real World
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/25/health/what-if-they-closed-42d-street-and-nobody-noticed.html When intuitively thinking about traffic and commuting times, it is rational to believe that the addition of extra paths can lead to a decrease in commuting times and allow for less traffic. However, in INFO 2040, we have learned that quite the opposite can occur; this phenomenon is called Braess’s Paradox in which transportation […]
Role of Search Algorithms in Spotify’s Discover Weekly
Companies like Pandora Radio have made a name for themselves through their promise of finding and offering new, exciting music to their users. Yet Pandora, which devotes itself entirely to this purpose, has seemingly taken a backseat to the (much) newer Spotify Discover Weekly series, which, according to Nikhil Sonnad’s The Magic that Makes Spotify’s […]
Contagious Diseases and Social Networks
In the past decade, there has been an outbreak of contagious diseases all around the world. Quite recently, there has been an outbreak of Zika virus, which has made it way even to the states. Although the virus originated in the continent of Africa, the first reported case of the Zika virus has been confirmed in Florida […]
Physician Shortage in the U.S.
The National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) was created in 1952 to help match medical school students with residency programs throughout the United States. Medical school students create a rank order list of residency programs based on their true preferences and NRMP uses a mathematical algorithm to match applicants to residency programs in a manner such […]
What would a fanatic Bid?
The world has many auctions of many forms – first price, second price, sealed bid, open bid and many more. The success of all of these auction formats, however, depends on the same thing – the existence of a set of market clearing prices which maximize the auctioneer’s or seller’s payoff. To determine the market […]
Online Car Sales Changing the Power in Car Buying Networks
This article discusses how used car purchasing websites are starting up and are beginning to take business away from in-person dealerships. It explains that while some car dealerships do not yet feel threatened by these online markets, surveys are showing that consumers would rather buy a car online than negotiate with a salesperson. Although they are buying […]
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