Apple’s Ecosystem: Information Cascades
Chapter 16 of the textbook gave the example of how fax machines are an example of an information cascade that exemplifies the direct-benefit effect. In other words, you would only want to buy a fax machine if you know that other people also own fax machines: this way they are compatible. There is no point […]
Squid and Self-Fulfilling Expectations Equilibrium
To say the South Korean Netflix series Squid Game has been fairly popular lately would be an understatement. According to major news outlets such as BBC and Reuters, some developers even took advantage of the show’s current hype to create a “play-to-earn” cryptocurrency inspired by it, only to run off with $3.38 million from its […]
Potential Problems in Following the Wisdom of the Crowd
Over the past couple weeks, we’ve learned about information cascades in class and discussed the “Wisdom of the Crowd” phenomenon. Wisdom of the Crowd refers to people imitating the decisions of others even when their private information indicates otherwise. The article “Pitfalls of ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’” by Phillip Ball explains the trend and also […]
Bayes’ Theorem’s Divine Application
According to Tuan Nguyen Doan’s article: A Bayesian Quest to Find God, David Easley and Joseph Halpern in my Networks class taught me a theorem to determine whether or not God exists. To unpack this outrageous claim and clickbait of sorts, Doan actually explains that Bayes’ theorem at its core can be applied to any […]
Google’s Ad Auction Shift
As we discussed in class, search engines, like Google typically utilize a second price auction to determine how advertisements appear on webpages, and the slots in which they appear. With a second price auction, advertisers’ dominant strategies are naturally their valuation for the ad slot that they are bidding on, thereby encouraging truthful bidding. Earlier […]
The Network Effect of NFTs
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique and non-interchangeable units of data stored on a digital blockchain, and in the context of the current day, they’re typically used to represent photos or videos (among other things). What is interesting about NFTs is that they use blockchain technology to establish a public proof of ownership. So while […]
Wisdom of the Crowd, Do’s and Don’ts
In class, we discussed the differences between the ideas of information cascades and wisdom of the crowd. The general idea was that if every one in the crowd makes a guess, then the average of all the guesses tends to be more accurate than that of a singular expert’s. However, there are a few flaws […]
Wisdom of the Crowd and its Implications
The article “The Right Way to Use the Wisdom of Crowds” highlights several studies that were conducted in order to understand the “wisdom of the crowd” phenomenon in terms of decision making and teamwork. The article states, “Evidence suggests that the combination of multiple, independent judgments is often more accurate than even an expert’s individual […]