Information Cascades Lead to Successful Startups
3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products In the tech industry, startups are a huge part of the culture and it is every engineer’s and entrepreneur’s dream to run a successful startup. However, most startups fail: 92% of startups fail within 3 years, many startups are not financially successful, companies have difficulty raising venture funding, […]
Is Netflix on the Verge of Collapse?
Over the past decade, Netflix has exponentially exploded into one of the largest broadcasting networks on the planet, and much of this growth can largely be attributed to network effects. Not unlike the rich-get-richer model discussed in class, as new content is added to the platform, it draws in new subscribers, which in turn motivates […]
Rich Get Richer: College Sports
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/rich-richer-college-sports-poorer-schools-struggle/story?id=41857422 This article that appeared on abc new two months ago highlights the “rich get richer” phenomenon in college sports. It outlines how, “the nation’s richest athletic departments — those in the Power Five conferences — pulled in a record $6 billion last year, nearly $4 billion more than all other schools combined.” Some reasons […]
Zipf’s Law for Cities – A Simple Explanation for Urban Populations
A quick glance at the list of the most populous cities in the United States reveals a very interesting, though apparently random trend. The most populous city, New York City (population 8.2 million according to the 2010 census), has approximately twice the population of the second most populous city (Los Angeles, population 3.9 million), three […]
Rich Get Richer- Top 1%
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_america/americas-current-economy/why-the-top-1-get-richer/ Martin Armstrong, an economist, suggests in this blog post the reason for the rich-get-richer phenomenon relating to the top 1% of individuals controlling 99% of the nation’s wealth. He takes a different stance from popular held view that the top 1% somehow controls and oppresses the population. While it is true that the […]
Technology and the False Information Cascade
In the digital age and the skyrocketing popularity of social media, information is readily available at the tips of everyone’s fingers and people have immediate access to more information than ever before. In spite of this unrestrained access, not all information is equal or even completely true. As much as the Internet is filled with credible facts […]
Reversed Network Effect
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/linkedin-twitter-and-reverse-network-effects http://fusion.net/story/368372/facebook-election-newsfeed-algorithm-chronological/ We tend to think network effects only moves in a positive direction: the product becomes more valuable if more people are using it. In class, the function f(z), the benefit to each consumer from having a z fraction of the population use the good, is an increasing function. However, in the article, LinkedIn, […]
Driverless cars: how the movement is completely dependent on cascades
There are countless articles providing advice on how to review the movement toward driverless cars. While the initial discussion was centered on salient bad reviews and mistakes, it has become more complex as powerful reviews outshine the rest. For example, the Obama administration has provided encouraging words and resources to support the movement. While there […]
Confirmed: Echo chambers exist on social media. So what do we do about them?
Resource: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/07/14/confirmed-echo-chambers-exist-on-social-media-but-what-can-we-do-about-them/ The article discusses how social scientists recently confirmed the existence of “Echo Chambers” in Facebook by finding quantitative evidence of social media users forming confirmation bias. The “Echo Chambers” refer to the communities formed by users connecting only with the people that support their point of view and creating polarized groups that resist any […]
Pluralistic Ignorance in the 2016 Presidential Election
http://www.norwichbulletin.com/opinion/20161110/letter-pluralistic-ignorance-may-explain-trumps-election Pluralistic Ignorance occurs when most people in a group have a certain belief, but, for some reason, they feel that the majority of the group disagrees with that belief. One example of Pluralistic Ignorance we discussed in class was when most people believe that other people like their government, even though most people actually […]
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