Road Networks Applied to Sid Meier’s Civilization
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy video games. The primary concept of the game is that multiple civilizations are pitted against each other. For example, a sample game would be Germany, United States, Canada, Britain, Russia, etc. Each player controls all aspects of a different civilization, and the goal is to win. Players can […]
Timing in diffusion networks
As learnt in chapter 19, certain behaviors can be diffused in a social network with threshold q. q meaning if the fraction of friends who are adapting the diffusing behavior is larger than q, the friend in question would adapt the behavior. After understanding the concept, I realized how the timing of diffusion is important […]
Bayes Law in Car Insurance
Your 16th birthday is right around the corner and your parents ask what you want for your birthday. Without hesitation you plead for a car. After much thinking, your parents say yes but only under the condition that you pay your own insurance. You look up the average cost of car insurance and see a […]
The Usage of Bipartite Graphs and Market Clearing Prices in Dating Apps
If your college experience is anything like mine as someone in a long-distance relationship, it is likely that you will always run into a group of friends, acquaintances, frat brothers or even TA’s offering their two cents into why the benefits of a long distance relationship does not outweigh its costs. Usually, it is these […]
Responses to COVID-19
Measures taken against COVID-19 can be tied to the different basic reproductive numbers, or R0. Masks comprised of different materials make a huge influence in contact rates for the COVID-19 virus. Throughout the pandemic, several types of masks were mass-produced to protect people from the airborne virus: blue-surgical, N95s, and homemade cloth […]
Mean Girls – Explaining the Unexplainable Social Phenomenon with Information Cascades
Many of us can think of a time that someone more socially powerful than us has made us or our friends feel bad. We are left wondering why mean people come into social power when the majority of people don’t like them? We can answer this question through information cascades. Every group of friends is […]
Bayesian Probability in Basic Sentiment Analysis
One of the most interesting and surprising applications of bayesian probability is it’s usefulness in sentiment analysis. You might be surprised at just how useful bayes theorem is in a field such as sentiment analysis (and, to more extents, machine learning in general), but actually, it is quite fascinating just how useful they are. The […]
Applying the SIR Model to COVID-19
COVID is obviously one of the most impactful epidemics/pandemics in our lifetime. The fact that it happened so recently and influenced our college career makes the epidemic topics in networks incredibly relevant and applicable to the entire class. In a 2020 paper from the National Center for Biotechnology Information titled “A SIR Model Assumption for […]
Apple, the Intermediary of the Digital Age
Discourse on Apple’s monopolistic control of what apps make it into the App Store, the platform which permits Apple users to download and use apps, is nothing new. However, recent price hikes by Apple show the amount of control the company has over the purchase and sale of apps in the technology industry. In the […]
Chess and its Relation to Game Theory
For centuries, Chess has maintained its status as one of the most popular games in the world. It is known for its complexity, strategic nature, and game knowledge that players must thoroughly understand in order to become a viable competitor. But it is, in fact, the strategic nature of Chess that makes it such an […]
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