‘Just Breathing’ is Enough to Spread
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320690.php#6 According to a study conducted by the University of Maryland, just breathing out is the only contact needed to spread the flu virus. It was found within the first hours of illness infected individuals produce aerosols, tiny droplets that suspend in the air for long periods of time. Prior to this, the average person […]
Apple’s Social Network
https://www.howtogeek.com/252100/what-to-do-if-you-cant-receive-text-messages-from-iphone-users/ The article talks about rigorous steps Apple sends customers through when they change to an android or non-Apple phone. Apple uses iMessage, their proprietary messaging platform, to allow customers to freely send message to one another. Apple also uses iMessage to send text messages when someone in the chat doesn’t use an Apple product. […]
Social Media Networks Effects
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/are-healthy-social-networks-key-prosperous-life-100812 In this article, the author discusses social networks, friends, and happiness. The friendship paradox states that your friends are more popular than you are, on average. This paradox is extremely evident within social media networks. For example, one study found that 98% of Twitter users subscribe to accounts that have more followers than they […]
Instagram and Its Experiment in Reducing Network Effects
Link: Instagram tests hiding Like counts globally One of the critical features for measuring the success of content on Instagram is how many likes a post receives. The number of likes determines how many users will see the post as their algorithm takes the number of likes in account to determine the most relevant media […]
Information Cascade in Swarms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395630/ Information cascade can be described as a phenomena that occurs mostly during the decision making process, where many people respond to something in the same way from information of a past person’s decision. This phenomena can be seen in many places in the real world, from stocks to social media. In this blog post […]
Health Insurance: increasing price transparency, decreasing asymmetry
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-releases-transparency-rule-in-hospital-pricing-11573825649?mod=article_inline The Trump administration released a rule such that “hospitals and insurers would be forced to disclose their secret negotiated rates for the first time” starting in 2021. These rates, whether facility fees or drug prices, are not publicized currently and held privately between hospitals and insurers through contracts and confidentiality agreements. Both policy […]
Global Protests and the Rapid Diffusion of Ideas
News source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50123743 As the year draws to a close, it is worth reminiscing on the numerous national protests that have occurred in various countries around the world. Many of these protests, most notably those in Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, and Bolivia, have gathered widespread international attention. While each protest has its own […]
Celebrities and Cascades
Blog Post # 3 https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7151 Celebrities have been known to having a big influence on the consumer world. People around the world will do anything to look, feel, and act like celebrities. Even going as far as listening to them about medical advice which they are not at all authorized to so. There […]
New Companies, New Tricks: Network Effects Just Aren’t Enough
https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-winner-takes-all-thinking-doesnt-apply-to-silicon-valley Nowadays, we use multiple platforms in our daily lives, like Amazon to find the perfect stocking stuffer, the Microsoft suite to get our assignments done, and an Uber to get home without having to wait for sometimes-slow public transportation. But the question really is, how did Amazon get to be so popular in the […]
Rich Get Richer, Success Breeds Success – Empirical Studies
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/19/6934.full.pdf Why are certain people so successful? Why do some of our peers do well, and some do worse? In this article, the idea that early initial success subsequently causes more success (success breeds success) is analyzed in field experiments. The authors ultimately come to the conclusion that successes bestowed on arbitrarily selected individuals produced […]
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