http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/pedrod/papers/kdd01a.pdf
Often when companies go about mining for potential customers to market to, they estimate their expected value from a particular customer as the expected profit less the cost of marketing. What the companies do not usually consider is the network value of the potential customer, that is, the expected revenue garnered as a result […]

In class we used a preferred-seller graph to model an ascending bid auction of multiple items, where the number of items and bidders is the same. Later, we adapted it for the auctioning of one item by adding “fake” items for which each bidder’s valuation is zero. However, not all types of auctions are easy […]

Uncloaking Terrorist Networks
Modeling Terrorist Networks 
We have seen examples of networks and the application of theory to topics like traffic patterns and auctions. Though these topics are interesting and important in their own right, it isn’t always apparent how the study of networks can have a much more serious and deadly application: the study of international […]

Source: Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second-Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords by Benjamin Edelman, Michael Ostrovsky, and Michael Schwarz
Pay-Per-Click advertising is the primary source of revenue for internet search companies such as Yahoo and Google. When a user enters a search query, advertisements to sites that match the query are returned […]

An article on power in social networks in a business context.
When Unequals Try to Merge as Equals

Recently in class we’ve been talking about power in social networks. This article in the New York Times discusses a merger between XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. The tricky part of this merger is that […]

In class we have discussed in good detail second-price sealed bid auctions. It’s easy to see that the deciding factors in the simple cases we looked at are purely economic. The optimal strategy for any bidder is to bid their private value - any more and they might pay too much, any less and they […]

In class we have gone over four main types of auctions: ascending bid, descending bid, first priced sealed bid and second price sealed bid. So far our discussions have focused on independent private values for individual items, but what if there are multiple items and bidders have different valuations depending on what combination of items […]

Reference:  Kerness, Bonnie.  “Solitary Confinement Torture in the U.S.” 1998.  http://sonic.net/~doretk/Issues/98-09%20FALL/solitary.html
            In her article about the implementation of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation in federal and state prisons, Kerness argues that the array of negative side effects potentially realized by those subjected to this form of treatment far outweighs the benefits afforded to society by […]

Citation
The PDF
Abdulkadiroğlu, Atila. “College Admissions with Affirmative Action.” International Journal of Game Theory; 2005, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p535-549, 15p
 
The College Admissions game is very similar to the real estate game that we discussed in class. The difference is that in the real estate game, each buyer has a set valuation for every house […]

Digg: The Most Efficient Way to Waste Your Time
Digg.com is a social bookmarking website that allows users to submit links with a description to a variety of categories. If users like the submission, they can click the “digg” button, or if they dislike it, they can click the “bury” button. The article discusses how Digg.com […]