Canada vs. US: COVID-19 Performance
Throughout the course of the spread of COVID-19 Canada has produced lower statistics for the number of cases and deaths than the US. The goal of this blog is to investigate the potential differences that have led to Canada controlling the pandemic better than its close neighbor based on the metric of “new daily cases”. […]
Tik Tok’s Success Due to Diffusion in Social Networks
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/01/31/tiktok-why-the-enormous-success/?sh=28dd50e465d1 https://medium.com/@kaichenshen/tik-tok-is-surging-social-network-ecology-the-brand-new-interaction-among-the-00s-generations-e7bfa572e829 Tik Tok is an app that has taken over our new generation. Through viral marketing, Tik Tok has made its way to the phone screens of millions of young people around the world. Through the app, people of all ages are able to show their creativity through short video clips that they can […]
The emergence diffusion of Waze
https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/waze-using-network-effects-to-improve-your-gps-system/ Waze is a well known GPS navigation software application that has gained large amounts of popularity over the last 5 years. Waze collects data from users of the application to provide quicker, faster and safer routes for other users. This occurs in the form of either automatic collection through the speed of the […]
The Market for Lemons and the Rise of Fake News
In the fast-paced, technology driven world that we live in today, the rise of fake news, or misinformation, is an issue that poses a major threat to society. Thousands of erroneous articles and posts on news outlets and social media platforms, that often remain unchecked and unverified, continue to be published and shared every day. […]
Tracking Diffusion in a Local Political Movement
In July of 2020, I was added to a private Facebook group titled “Change the Arcadia High Emblem.” In the midst of several social movements in a COVID-19 era, my high school network consisting of students, alumni, and faculty, also decided to raise awareness about a local issue in my hometown of Arcadia, California. This […]
Strategic voting in Top 2 electoral systems
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518306-democrats-ramp-up-pressure-on-lieberman-to-drop-out-of-georgia-senate-race A Louisiana Primary system, used in Louisiana and in Georgia special elections is a modified Top 2 electoral system. In a Top 2 system multiple candidates run in one nonpartisan blanket primaries (candidates in all parties run in one primary). The top 2 candidates advance to the general election. In a Louisiana Primary […]
Contact Networks: When Will the COVID-19 Pandemic End?
Sources: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237832 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/when-will-the-covid-19-pandemic-end In class we have discussed the spread of epidemic diseases through contact networks using several models. The one with richer properties, the SIR model, is a proper simplified representation of the COVID-19 pandemic we are all currently experiencing. The SIR model embodies nodes that can be susceptible (S), infectious (I), and removed […]
Diffusion of the Phoenician Alphabet and Other Ideas in History
While diffusion may appear as a relatively new idea due to its prominence in the analysis of social media and modern information networks, it is an age old phenomenon that applies to the spread of innovations and cultures. Different human civilizations around the world were first connected by long arduous journeys which made cultural and […]
Social Networks, Diffusion and Flattening the Curve
Primary sources consulted: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200604-what-to-do-with-friends-who-dont-social-distance https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0898-6 A summary: Within the branching process model used to predict the spread of infectious diseases, I found that the model relies completely on social networks, the same networks we’ve been studying all semester. I wanted to investigate the link between social networks and the concept of diffusion we’ve discussed […]
The Spread of Fake News and Diffusion
Link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/ This article talks about how algorithms take advantage of our cognitive biases to spread fake news. All of us have a limited amount of information we can process. However, social media overloads us with information, meaning we can’t actually comprehend or evaluate all information we see. Often, users only look at the first […]
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