We recently focused on simple tipping phenomena. Typically, these models involve a strictly increasing function, where the number of people attending rises with people expected to attend. However, what if, at some point, additional forces cause this function to begin to decrease - congestion costs, for example?
(Much of the mathematics behind this is […]

In class we discussed the characteristics of the market for lemons. In this case there is asymmetric information between the buyer and seller. While presumably the seller knows whether the car is good or not, the buyer cannot tell. This situation is very similar to the online market of buyers and […]

 
“Yahoo’s Undercover Social Network”

 
http://blogs.business2.com/utilitybelt/2007/04/yahoos_undercov.html
In the world of Internet social networks, whose dominant participants are those such as Myspace and Match.com, a new player has emerged. According to the article “Yahoo’s Undercover Social Network,” Yahoo Answers is the fastest growing component of Yahoo. In the past year Yahoo Answers has more than quadrupled its […]

Cheaters and Chumps: Game Theorists Offer a Surprising Insight Into the Evolution of Fair Play
Cooperation has long been prevalent in human civilization and society. This article sets up an example in which both players cooperating are rewarded, and both players cheating do poorly, while one player cheating and one attempting to cooperate gives the largest […]

http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/berk/papers/disc.pdf
Discrimination in the labor market has always been a hot topic. Characteristics such as race or sex which do not affect the ability of the employee are used in determining whether the applicant gets the job. Statistical discrimination occurs in many ways. In cases where a person applies to a job where they know they […]

While MacBooks and iMacs have experienced drastic growth in the consumer market, their implementation in enterprises has yet to catch up. Most analysts believe that Microsoft will continue to dominate the market, however Roger Ehrenberg points out the many mistakes analysts have made in the past. His article criticizes Wall Street for not […]

In this blog the author Scott Sanders discusses how the rapid advancement of new technologies is allowing a new type of collective swarming to occur. In his post Sanders argues that newer communication tools such as blogs, wiki, and mobile phones have allowed individuals to reorder their lives and coordinate actions in a previously […]

I am extremely interested in ways that we can represent online social networks that are both informative and visually pleasing. I am currently writing an annotated bibliography of social visualization research as a reference for my own future research. Visualizations of online social activitiy is important for business, researchers, and technology experts. It helps to […]

http://www.slate.com/id/2095993/
The article entitled, “The Kerry Cascade,” explains how the unpopular John Kerry was able to win the Democratic presidential nomination.  However, this article takes a psychological approach at analyzing what occurred in the 2004 presidential nomination.  Psychologist Solomon Asch performed an experiment on conformity. This experiment had a group of people stare at a set […]

Recently we’ve been talking about the cascades of information and influence. Communications networks quickly come to mind. We think of mobile phone services and chat clients. Users want to choose the service that allows them to talk to the most people with the least cost. With cell phone service providers create incentives for prospective customers […]