It took me a while to find a topic related to information cascades that wasn’t already in the blog, but I eventually came across a 16 page research paper by John H. Miller and Scott E. Page of the Sante Fe Institute about modeling standing ovations. It turns out that an information cascade model […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/how-the-low-fat-low-fact-cascade-just-keeps-rolling-along/
The article that I’ve chosen for this post (first link) is about how the medical world was duped into the cascading idea that a low-fat diet would lower the risk of heart disease. John Tierney, a science columnist for The New York Times, cites Gary Taubes’ book, Good Calories, Bad Calories to explain the steps […]

As more people use search engines, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a profitable way for website owners looking to boost their ranking in organic search results. Some companies have made SEO into a business by learning the intricate details of a particular search engine’s algorithm and tailoring a client’s webpage for prime placement. Clearly, […]

Even the experts missed the housing bubble
by Robert J. Shiller
Mar 05, 2008
http://www.ohio.com/editorial/commentary/16246947.html?page=all&c=y
This article starts out by summarizing how Alan Greenspan failed to predict the recent housing bubble, and how it is responsible for the collapsing of financial markets in the United States. The article explores how something like this could slip under the radar of […]

An application of information cascading is groupthink.  Cohesive groups promote a series of ideas and socially ostracize those with opposing viewpoints.  Other members lose incentive to hold opposing views as this can lead to embarrassments if they are seen as foolish or against the group in some way.  Irving Janus classifies eight symptoms of groupthink:

  illusions of […]

Blog Post Number 2
Slap in the Facebook:
It’s Time for Social Networks to Open Up

http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/open_social_net 
Basically in this article, the author talks about how there are social networks all over the Internet that allow for the sharing of information from person to person or through various relationships. One of these websites that he cites is Facebook, which […]

Although the VCG mechanism reproduces market-clearing prices in second-price auctions, it has several shortcomings that pose great threats to reliant sites such as eBay, Google, and Yahoo. Sellers sometimes use shill bids to artificially drive up the price of goods and provoke bidding wars among auction participants. This behavior is notoriously difficult for […]

Lately, many observers and pundits are glued to the rear-view mirror, fixated on the implosion of residential real estate and excessive leverage, the last two market bubbles, wondering how in the world we could not have seen them developing. At the same time, investors are dumping financial assets they never understood in the first place […]

CNN News: Southwest grounds 44 planes
One year ago, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) found that Southwest Airlines failed to meet inspection requirements. More recently, the airlines put three employees on administrative leave and began conducting an internal investigation of allegations that it flew aircrafts without proper inspections. This triggered curiosity in the House Transportation […]

In class we’ve talked about information cascade. One of the aspects is that when the majority of participates chose to accept/reject, it’s rational for you to mimic what they did no matter what signal you’ve got. The reason is that if more people chose to accept/reject, it is more probable that accept/reject is the right […]