What Would Different Voting Methods Have Meant for the Outcome of the 2016 Election?
In the article that I found, the Vox journalist discusses different voting methods that would have possibly changed the outcome of the 2016 election. Given the discrepancies between the winner of the electoral vote, Donald Trump, and the winner of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton, it is interesting to consider which candidate other methods would have […]
Scandal Cascades
In the news, it seems that we find more and more sexual harassment stories than ever before. Why is this? At first, it is possible that the election of Donald Trump was a factor in the beginning, as he was associated with some sexual harassment scandals. But it is possible that what really perpetuated this […]
Snapchat vs Instagram: A diffusion threshold in the making?
The following article touches on the rise in popularity of Instagram’s upcoming story feature and how it has created new found competition for Snapchat, an app that seemingly was in a league of it’s own. The year after Instagram added their story feature, which allows users to post a photo or brief video that their […]
Cascades, Mugabe, and Bitcoin
Decision-making is a major point of interest when analyzing networks. When an individual is presented with a binary decision, the individual generally refer to others’ decisions when coming to their own decision. For example, if someone is deciding which restaurant to go to, they may go to a restaurant that appears to be busy, expecting […]
An Empirical Test of the Lemons Model
George Akerlof famously pointed out that there are two possible outcomes when sellers have better information than buyers. The first is that bad products (or lemons) will drive down the market and force high-quality products out. This is because buyers will be unable to distinguish between good and bad products and sellers are incentivized to […]
Ranking Based Voting in Santa Fe
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/judge-orders-santa-fe-to-implement-ranked-choice-voting-in/article_db1cc952-d523-11e7-992d-07631cda8c3c.html This article describes the situation for the mayoral election in Santa Fe. Next year, there will be an election for the mayor of Santa Fe. However, there are currently five candidates for the mayor position. The current voting system in Santa Fe, voters choose one candidate out of the list of five candidates. Recently, […]
Mr. Market and Information Cascades
In his famous book, “The Intelligence Investor,” Benjamin Graham conceptualizes a hypothetical investor called Mr. Market. Mr. Market invests in the stock market based on his emotions such as panic, euphoria, and apathy instead of using fundamental or technical analysis. Graham coined the idea that investors often make irrational decisions in regard to their investments, […]
Debunking Ranked-Choice Voting…Sort of
http://www.fairvote.org/rcv One common narrative during and following the 2016 presidential election was that American citizens were stuck with two major-party candidates they disliked, and ultimately had to decide either to vote for the major-party candidate they disliked less, abstain from voting altogether, or vote third party. Of course, many others – particularly partisan stalwarts – […]
On the Edge of Success: Tipping Points
Equilibrium values in network effects can be thought of when individuals’ reservation prices are equal to the market prices. Often three equilibrium values exist. One equilibrium value that always exists is at 0 (or when z=0). Another typical equilibrium value is z’. The third typical equilibrium value is z’’. The three equilibrium values 0, z’, […]
SIR Model with Measles and More
By definition, “An SIR model is an epidemiological model that computes the theoretical number of people infected with a contagious illness in a closed population over time.” A recent paper on the strategy of pulse vaccinations takes into account the SIR Model. When the SIR Model is used in the real world, scientists focus on […]
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