Crowdsourcing for Accessibility
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/city-apps-help-and-hinder-disability/574963/ People have always crowdsourced information, members of the disabled community in particular. They needed to know which public places they could access which they couldn’t. This Atlantic article talked about how accessibility maps made through crowdsourcing makes the assumption that information is provided instantaneously and that it’s always correct when sourced from one […]
Political Diffusion in Southeast Asia
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0192512116629462 The principles of democracy take time to spread to countries that have not had exposure to that form of government. In Southeast Asia, there are some countries that overthrew their former autocracies in favor of a functioning and open democracy, while others have been less successful in implementing and preserving democratic values. This article […]
Information Cascades and Economic Bubbles
An economic bubble is when an item or asset is valued at a price much higher than its intrinsic value. This surge in price occurs when frenzy like market behavior takes place in investing or buying a certain asset. These bubbles will always burst, causing huge economic repercussions, because the perceived value will continue to […]
Diffusing Emotions Through Social Media
(Blog post inspired by CGP Grey’s video on this matter) Emotions are powerful factors that can drive people to action or inaction. One of the more widespread effects that emotions can have involves catalyzing the spread of a viral post on various social media. Researchers have studied various emotions: anger, disgust, sadness, and joy, and […]
PSA for Parents: Vaccinate Your Kids!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/health/chicken-pox-vaccine-asheville.html At least 36 students in a North Carolina private school, almost a quarter of the student body, came down with chicken pox. Even though North Carolina state laws require students to get vaccinated for the chicken pox, parents can opt out for medical or religious reasons. Due to misinformation and ignorance this school has […]
Collective Animal Behavior from Bayesian Estimation and Probability Matching
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002282 In our class we talk about Bayes Rule in Chapter 16, Information Cascades. It correlates to computing the probability of various events, and we use it where a person needs to make decisions on whether a certain choice is the best one, given that the person has received other private information or observed this […]
Watching Sports as an Activity with Network Effects
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2016/jul/09/helen-pidd-why-wont-tv-show-more-womens-cycling In the talk of gender equality in sports one issue is that women athletes are paid less than male athletes in the same sport. This can be partially attributed to the fact that the male versions of sports typically have more fans, and thus a larger viewership. The enjoyment of following a sport is […]
Nash equilibrium American football decision making
American football is a very strategy riddled game. While a players performance is important, the decision making a player makes is highly scrutinized as well as the coach’s. In a personal project of mine I recently began looking into the different meta game strategies that have been developed by coach’s. What I found was nash […]
International Diffusion of Renewable Energy Innovations: Lessons from the Lead Markets for Wind Power in China, Germany and USA
This article was written in 2014 and discusses the international diffusion of renewable energy innovations with a focus on the lessons learned from the lead markets for wind power in China, Germany, and the USA. Climate change is pushing a transition towards a new energetic system. In 2014 energy use was responsible for about 83% […]
Network Effects in Fraud Markets
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-36782724 This article discusses reasons that people buy fake designer items and talks about why the market for these items is flourishing. It talks about how while officially, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau considers buying fake goods akin to aiding criminals, it has become increasingly acceptable to intentionally buy fake designer items. There are still […]
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