Urban Legends Never Die: The Spread of Urban Legends with a Modified SIR Model
Urban legends are everywhere. Whether a simple joke between friends or a ‘fun fact’ shared among acquaintances, urban legends are hard to escape. You would be hard-pressed to find someone in modern-day society who’s never heard of a single one, especially given the popularity of some, such as Bloody Mary or the Loch Ness Monster. […]
The Apple’s Ecosystem: A Systemic Incentive for Adoption and Diffusion for Apple Products
In this YouTube video created by Marques Brownlee, Brownlee discusses the importance of the Apple ecosystem; in technological terms, the ecosystem is a set of objects that interact with each other. Brownlee lauds the efficiency of the Apple’s ecosystem for two factors. First, the Apple “objects”—such as iPad, Mac, iPhone, etc—interact with each other in […]
COVID-19 Contagion and Calculating a More Accurate Basic Reproductive Number (R0): Perspectives from a Patient in the Statler Hotel
Unfortunately, despite all of my best efforts to stay away from the current pandemic over the past nine months, I too became a statistic in the Tompkins County Health Department’s COVID-19 Dashboard. After coming back from Thanksgiving break, I quickly lost my senses of taste and smell. A day later, a positive test result led […]
The Spread of AIDS: How a silent killer devastated America, and what we can learn from it.
It’s 1980, and flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas is visiting New York City. He is a well-traveled man, routinely flying between the west and east coasts, and internationally. A prolific member of the local gay scene and an avid partygoer, Gaëtan enjoys himself before leaving on a return flight to LA. Unbeknownst to him, an at […]
Cascading in Capital Markets
Cascading in Capital Markets It is within human nature to dictate our decisions and and actions based upon a variety of factors, most importantly the information observed and received from others. Cascading, or herd behavior, is most explicitly seen in its pure form in capital markets when quick decisions and predictions about the future […]
Diffusion of the #MeToo Movement
The phrase “Me Too” was first used by social activist Tarana Burke in 2006 on MySpace to promote empathy among women of color who were victims of sexual assault, but the #MeToo movement did not gain traction until around 2017 when numerous women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. The movement […]
How do Makers & Anti-Maskers Co-Exist?
As I hail from Michigan, I’ve first handedly witnessed contention about COVID-19, dubbed Coronavirus, as well as the validity of the scientific statements that the government has released. From the very beginning, there were those who doubted that Coronavirus was “really that easily spread,” whether the virus was as serious as the CDC claimed, and […]
Network Diffusion – Xbox or Playstation?
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/playstation-ps4-xbox-one-sony-microsoft-crossplay-explained-2018-3 INTRODUCTION: Since the release of the original Xbox in 2001, both Microsoft and Sony have dominated the console gaming scene with their roughly equivalent consoles – Microsoft with Xbox, and Sony with PlayStation. One thing keeping these two giants in opposition is the lack of technological support for playing games across platforms. […]
Washed Up Webkinz and The Birthday Party Effect
On a zoom call the other night, my friends painfully reminded me of the Webkinz I had probably left starving many, many years ago. I first felt an overwhelming sense of guilt at how I’d left Bubbles, Buddy and Shirley (I couldn’t stick with the alliteration for some reason) alone and then I thought about […]
Successfully Containing COVID-19 in Taiwan: Quasi Population Immunity
Amidst the global pandemic, strategies for containing the virus have varied worldwide. Natural herd immunity, while not much of an actual strategy, has been discussed as a way to stop the spread. However, an estimated 70 to 90% of a given population would have to be infected, which would most likely result in significant mortality. […]
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