The Social, Economic and Political Effect of Information Cascades
This article from The Economist (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/10/mass-movements) summarizes the influence of information cascades in social, economic and political behavior using research-based policy analysis from Ellis and Fender’s paper on “Riots, revolutions, democratization, and information cascades”. In the authors’ words, an information cascade is essentially “where people make decisions on the basis of their observations of other […]
The Key to Making your YouTube Video Go Viral
Class was about to start and I was chatting with my friend about a YouTube video she saw earlier that day. She was talking about how funny the video was that this girl was playing the clarinet in an odd way. So after class I logged onto YouTube to watch the video, however forgot what […]
The US elections: the games politicians play
For a long time, game theory has analyzed the process of voting and political strategies. One of the best-known examples of game theory in politics is the Median Voter Theorem, in which political parties gravitate toward the ideology of the median voter. Politicians know that, when placed on a spectrum, voters are likely to […]
Bacteria Organize According to Rich-Get-Richer Principle
Scientists have noticed that bacteria often organize according to the rich-get-richer pattern by collecting together in biofilms. This research can dramatically affect how bacterial infections that are immune to particular antibiotics are treated. When bacteria gather in these biofilms, they behave differently, change their gene expression, and are more resistant to antibiotics since their combined […]
Hitting the Critical Mass
In lecture, we learnt that when there exists network effects, we would expect to see a product having two equilibrium points for its demand. One of the equilibrium is also known as the tipping point, at which once you get so many usages of the product, the product would have reached a critical mass that […]
Slack and Network Effects
This article discusses Slack, which is a relatively new messaging technology marketed towards businesses and professional use. The messaging application allows individuals to communicate in groups or through direct messaging. The app also affords the sharing of documents and pictures, which can be directly commented on by other members of the Slack community. In […]
Microsoft’s Tay or: The Intentional Manipulation of AI Algorithms
In this post, I would like to discuss the events that occurred last Spring, after Microsoft launched a learning AI chat-bot named Tay. These events are discussed in this article, if you would like to read further. Last March, Microsoft released Tay, an AI chat-bot that would learn from its discussions. Microsoft released Tay as part of research […]
Should Apple Release iMessage to Android?
Apple’s messaging service iMessage allows users to communicate in a variety of useful and convenient methods, including messaging over wi-fi, read receipts and a video chat feature called FaceTime. The issue many users have with iMessage, however, is that it is offered only on Apple devices. Individuals that own Android products are unable to take […]
How did polls miss the presidential election result so badly?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/09/why-polling-faces-a-moment-of-reckoning-after-the-2016-election/ This is a piece of news that comments on the 2016 Presidential election and why all the pollsters are so far off the actual result. This is the second time straight that polls have made the wrong prediction, and even worse than the first time, they missed it by a huge margin. The […]
Didn’t See That Coming: Election Polls, Public, Information Cascades
This year’s election produced a wide range of reactions including outrage and disbelief. Why the disbelief? We can look to multiple sources that possibly fed people the idea that Donald Trump would not win. One of these sources is the polls of which the majority predicted Hillary Clinton to prevail. The reference articles in this […]
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