Following the Crowd: Tik Tok, Dominant Content, and Their Influence
As we learned in lecture, the Herd Experiment proves that the actions and decisions of a large group may solely be dependent on the behavior of the first two people of the group. It is interesting to analyze the algorithms of Tik Tok through the lens of herd behavior. According to Tiernan Ray, the algorithm […]
Using Bayes’ Theorem While Reading Headlines
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-consume-news-more-intelligently-using-bayes-theorem-a3273d0fff5e While Bayes’ Theorem can provide many insights, it is not always apparent or easy to readily use it. The article I have linked above discusses how to think about Bayes’ Theorem when considering news headlines. First, it defines Bayes’ Theorem and reaffirms it as a useful way to revise certain outcomes or beliefs when […]
Fast Fashion and Information Cascades: What’s Up Next?
A recent article by Open Access Government, “Social media “influence” accelerates fast fashion culture” discusses how social media is treated as a shopping platform and used to promote fast fashion trends. While the article does not list an author, Open Access Government is a site dedicated to discussing key public policies from around the world. […]
PageRank and Multimodal Brian Network
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.734711/full This article dives deep into the analysis of brain networks and states that network analysis has been one of the most significant methods in understanding brain disease diagnosis. The article covers multiple network analysis methods, but the one that directly relates to our discussion during lectures is the application of the PageRank algorithm to […]
Information Cascades and the Financial Market
An information cascade occurs when a person’s decision is made solely based on information about decisions made by those before them. It is the idea that if many people are choosing one thing, it must be better. For example, person A goes to a new city. He hasn’t eaten and is deciding between two […]
Advertising on a real-world platform: Facebook advertising
We have learned a lot in class about auctions, including those for advertisements, which may include different advertisement slots that may have different values to advertisers (typically some slots may be easier to see and pop out more, which makes them worth more than other slots that may be harder to see). In these examples, […]
Pumpkin Auction?
During the fall season, or more specifically during the pumpkin season, various towns have the tradition of auctioning pumpkins. Pumpkin auctions are a fun and interactive method of selling mass amounts of produce for buyers who want a set number of pumpkins. Why create an auction to bid on pumpkins? Well, pumpkins are high in […]
How Hinge Uses Perfect Matching
Hinge is a popular dating app used to find new dating partners. It asks you questions about your personality, and develops the most stable matching out of candidates. A stable matching tries to find the perfect matching, like what we have discussed in class. Hinge adapted a popular algorithm to do so, the Gale-Shapley Algorithm. […]
How DeFi’s Automated Market Makers Avoid Constricted Sets
Automated market makers, such as Uniswap, enable perfect matchings to occur between those who choose to swap one currency into another currency, by holding liquidity in both pools. Uniswap’s research team has algorithmically determined what the market clearing prices would be and accordingly priced the assets; in this case, this mechanism enables users to effectively […]
PageRank Manipulation and How Google Fight it
In order to provide relevant and accurate search results, Google uses a PageRank system to rank web pages. However, this PageRank algorithm can also be manipulated by certain webmasters to rank their websites higher on the search engine One way to increase the PageRank of a website is to have many other popular websites reference […]
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