http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
As our notes state, popularity is the idea that while most things are known to an immediate circle, a few rise above and become widely accepted and/or admired by a more global community. Being a popular programming language is not different. Paul Graham writes a whole essay on what makes a programming language […]

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Combinatorics/ThreeOrThree.shtml
A famous theorem in combinatorics known as the Friendship Theorem states the following:
“In a party of six people, there are at least three mutual acquaintances, or there are at least three mutual strangers.”
It is clear that this statement is equivalent to saying that if we use a bicoloring of the edges in the complete graph […]

Yesterday, MIT’s dean of admissions stepped down after admitting to lying about her academic credentials when she was hire, 28 years earlier. Marilee Jones had claimed to have degrees from three different New York colleges, when in fact she did not have a college degree at all. She had initially been hired for a position […]

http://press.meetup.com/archives/000464.html
Last presidential election race saw a change in the way politicians informed America on their positions both domestic and foreign. Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s manager for the 2004 presidential election, learned about a small Internet website called Meetup.com. The website connects people together with other people who share a similar interest. These like-minded individuals form […]

http://www.healthywealthynwise.com/article.asp?Article=5203
While browsing the internet I came across this article, and the title attracted my attention. Sadly, the article was not about Santa Claus nor the Easter Bunny, but it did analyze and attempt to debunk the six degrees idea. While the article does a good job exposing possible problems with the theory, its claims can […]

An important aspect of graph structure is a clique or cluster: a highly connected component of nodes. For example, a clique within a social network might be a group of friends that all know each other. If we have a graph that represents countries that are trading partners, we could identify a cartel […]

According to a paper by Len Skerratt in 2000, there is substantial evidence that financial markets do not react to information exactly as suggest by the efficient market hypothesis as argued by many. How can this be? One of the main explanations contribute the discrepancies to exogenous imperfections such as transaction costs. However, Skerratt focuses […]

Recent media has criticized Cornell’s cultural living communities for facilitating and encouraging segregated housing. While the housing initiative was clearly made with good intentions, many feel that the implementation of ethnocentric housing actually discourages the diversity Cornell aims to support, or, at very least, limits the interchange and interaction of people from diverse racial backgrounds.
In […]

Russia Plans World’s Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska 
Russia recently released plans to build the world’s longest tunnel.  The proposed tunnel would be dug beneathe the bering straight, linking Siberia to Alaska, and would contain a railway, highway, pipelines, power, and fiber-optic cables.  The tunnel would be more than twice as long as the channel tunnel […]

It is interesting to consider the phenomenon of information cascades when people have to make decisions between several choices.  This does not seem to be too big of a deal when making decisions as to where to eat, how to dress, etc. based on what other people are doing.  However, when an information cascade concerns […]