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Game Theory in Athletic Doping

“Sportsmen who take drugs may be prisoners of a different game” writes The Economist. This “different game” alludes to the prisoner’s dilemma, a concept explored in Game Theory. Prisoner’s dilemma is explained as the following: when two prisoners are placed in a situation where they both have to simultaneously choose one of two options, to […]

Game Theory in Hiring

Game theory is a field applicable in many real world situations such as sports matches and auctions. It can also be used by companies to figure out the best way to run things. When finding a new employee a company must weigh the risks and rewards of bringing that person onto the team. This is […]

Hyena Social Networks

The principle of triadic closure is well known and accepted for human social networks, but research suggests that it also applies to Hyenas too. According to a 20-year study run by the University of Pennsylvania, researchers found strong evidence that spotted hyenas formed large packs through triadic closure. What was interesting about their research was that […]

Game Theory in a Politically Fractured America

Since that one fateful day on November 8th, its seems that the nation we live in has been rife with tensions and conflicts. Nearly every week there’s some story about the latest protests, the latest clash between the right and the left, the latest indication that the United States of America are far from united. […]

The phenomenon of memes

Why you’ll share this story: The new science of memes How did the Bee Movie come to be an Internet sensation? What about the inundation of Harambe, Arthur, Doge or Forever Alone memes? How did such memes become successfully viral over so many others? Further, how is the dissemination of memes translated and accelerated through […]

Social Networks in Literature

With the pervasiveness of technology in everyday life, the principles of computer science and logical thinking have found their way into the traditionally “non-technical” disciplines such as the humanities or the arts. The oft rigid image of computer science as a cold, unfeeling and sterile tool for the sciences is constantly being challenged with pioneering […]

Game Theory in the Current Political Environment

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-08/a-game-theory-solution-for-a-fractured-america The article above explains how the volatile political environment could benefit if everyone learned a little game theory. In this scenario, one political extreme would be Player A and the other would be Player B. The article argues that the problem mirrors the prisoner’s dilemma in which two prisoners must decide whether or not […]

Re-evaluating the importance of weak ties in finding a job

The author of this article suggests that the best way to find employment in the modern job market is no longer through weak ties. Instead, Ilana Gershon claims that “workplace ties” (i.e. connections with your current or former co-workers, bosses, clients, etc.) are more useful. As discussed in class, weak ties are powerful tools for finding […]

Social Network Spam

http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/G.Stringhini/papers/socialnet-spam.pdf The article posted above is an academic research paper published by three researches at UC Santa Barbara on detection of Social Network Spam/Spammers. It was published in 2010, so it is fairly old in reference to the speed at which social technologies develop (it even mentions Myspace in the study), however it yields fairly […]

Slow Roads? No more Roads.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43g8yn/why-elon-musks-tunnel-system-cant-solve-congestion-in-la   This article by Corin Faife critiques Elon Musk’s worldview when Musk tweets out a status saying “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…” Six months after this tweet, Musk actually was able to detail his idea of tunneling machines and unveiling his concept […]

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