Information Cascades, Social Media, and Voter Turnouts
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-president-social-media-echo-chamber-hypernormalisation-adam-curtis-protests-blame-a7409481.html The outcome of the presidential election came as a nasty shock to many, who have expressed immense dissatisfaction over our new president-elect. It would be interesting to analyze where this shock originates, and also consider just why it seems so prevalent when the majority of our country voted for Trump over Clinton. Considering the […]
Information Cascade and Twitter
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/wosn10/tech/full_papers/Galuba.pdf This paper establishes and records a research studying social networks’ information dynamics and behaviors in regards to Twitter’s URL reposts. The authors underscore the statistical aspect of information cascade in the context to develop a information propagation model that predicts the pattern of information diffusion within the network. The article follows the concept of […]
A Difficult Decision
Whether you are happy with its outcome or not, 2016’s election is a political scientist’s dream. Love them or hate them, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shined a bright spotlight on the economics of politics, especially in the area of political endorsements. As an American, I must note that it is objectively surprising just how […]
What was Facebook’s role in the Presidential election?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/technology/facebook-is-said-to-question-its-influence-in-election.html I am writing this blog post in response to an article titled “Facebook, in Cross Hairs After Election, Is Said to Question Its Influence.” It was written by Mike Isaac and published in the New York Times. After being accused of helping spread misinformation and fake news stories that influenced how the American electorate […]
Tipping Point of Temperature
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/as-trump-heads-to-washington-global-warming-nears-tipping-point In class we defined a tipping point in terms of products and services, stating it to be a point or value which determines if the population using the product or services will increase. In this article, the tipping point they refer to is the temperature. According to the UN and scientists, the world is […]
How Bees Teach Each Other to Solve Problems
In this article it talks about how scientists constructed experiments that represented behavioral dynamics within a bee population. First, the scientist taught a bee to pull strings to access rewards of nectar to prove that it could learn to solve simple problems. When the bee was later assimilated back with the hive, it remarkably acted as a ‘trainer bee’ that taught it’s problem solving skill to other bees that went to easily solve the same puzzle. The […]
Rich-Get-Richer Effects in BitCoin Trading
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/518541/rich-get-richer-effect-observed-in-bitcoin-digital-currency-network/ This article discusses how the rich-get-richer effect appears in BitCoin trading. To those unfamiliar, BitCoin essentially dominates the realm of digital currency, where various users can make secure, direct online transitions with each other. According to the article, the phenomenon of exchanging BitCoins emerged in 2009 and began to rapidly grow in popularity after […]
The Tipping Point: Broken Window Theory
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which describes many phenomena in which little changes cause big differences. In particular, I found the Broken Window Theory to be very interesting. The background behind the case was that New York City in the 80s and 90s was a very dangerous place to be. Murder rates were […]
The “silent majority” and counteracting network effects in politics
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-sarkozy-idUSKBN1380C6 The linked article, “Sarkozy courts ‘silent majority’ in French presidential race,” discusses Nicolas Sarkozy, a former president of France who lost reelection to the current incumbent but is eyeing a second term in next year’s election. Sarkozy, like Trump, is a (right-wing) conservative and is attracting negative media coverage due to some extreme positions […]
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