Machine Learning technology as a tool for manipulation
https://hackernoon.com/more-than-a-million-pro-repeal-net-neutrality-comments-were-likely-faked-e9f0e3ed36a6 Net Neutrality has been a hot topic since the regulations to check the censorship and monopoly of telecommunications has passed in 2015. However, with the recent shift in leadership, FCC has been trying to repeat the net neutrality act and return the power to the monopolizing companies. The article linked above exposes the extent […]
Information Cascade and Black Friday
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/27/news/companies/black-friday-gun-sales/index.html Information cascade occurs when one makes a decision based on other’s decisions. It usually occurs because people think that other people either know more information about things or that they want to imitate what others are doing. I was in Boston during thanksgiving with a few friends and decided to go Black Friday shopping […]
AI and Game Theory
As the years have progressed, so have the studies of game theory and progression of artificial intelligence. They are seemingly unrelated topics yet there can be some very useful overlap which this article discusses. From a surface level view, many people may think that game theory can just be utilized for simple models like we […]
Contagion on Graphs
The paper, “Epidemic spreading on complex networks with community structures”, addresses modeling the spread of contagion on complex networks. In class we discussed the spread of contagion on trees which is more ideal than realistic. Very few community structures among people have this perfect structure that makes them easily analyzable; we discussed in class the […]
Role of Information Cascades in anonymity with Bitcoin
Link: https://coincenter.org/entry/how-anonymous-is-bitcoin In class, we have discussed how information cascades can influence people in making up decisions based on only the evidence that they observe. We saw the urn example where due to lack of true knowledge of the urns, each person has to make estimates from the responses of previous people who had picked out of the urn. […]
Prediction Markets and Cryptocurrency
Link: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ethereum-based-prediction-market-moirai-become-one-first-regulated-icos/ As we discussed prediction markets in class, there are many applications of this market in decentrailized institutions such as bitcoin and ethereum. One such initiative which is gaining significant traction is called Moirai, an ethereum-based prediction market. Moirai has been fighting very hard to obtain licenses that can help it become one of the first […]
Apple Ruling the Smartphone Market
Apple Market Share in the U.S Apple has been the most popular smartphone in the U.S for several years for now. It is interesting to look at its percent share year after year in comparison to other types of smartphone. Looking at some of the drastic increases of market share only forces me to think […]
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 […]
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