My high school friend was recently a contestant on NBC’s game show “Deal or No Deal.” As any responsible engineering-student friend would do, I asked her (after they already filmed her episode) if she researched the game theory involved. Her response was had something to do with makeup and interviews, and boiled down to “no”.
Searching for “Deal […]

Energy Use Study Demonstrates Remarkable Power of Social Norms
An interesting extension of the “information cascade” effect. Researchers found that, given information about other people’s energy usage, people will likely adjust their own energy usage to match the “social norm” as presented to them. A study was done on a group in California to observe […]

http://wwwlisc.clermont.cemagref.fr/ImagesProject/FinalReport/literature_scientific_bacground/final_rep_1.3_fichiers/final_rep_1.3.pdf
In class we have been touching on the subject of network diffusion, and how it can result in innovation diffusion, with early adopters, etc. The linked paper expands upon those ideas. It takes into consideration several factors, including the risk of early adoption, how the media affects this diffusion, and the idea of “critical mass”. […]

In a recent issue of Forbes, the meaning of networks was probed and articles were selected covering four different sectors: network breakthroughs, lifestyle, technology, and community. In the community division of networks, an article titled A Small Circle of Friends by Virginia Postrel discusses a particular type of network, the self-help group. The workings of […]

As social networking sites become more popular, new companies are trying to break away from the computer to create a more mobile, web-based network.  A recent article in the New York Times highlights two new websites that have brought social networking websites to users’ cellphones.   
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/technology/30social.html
 
The first site is called Kyte (http://www.kyte.tv/home/index.html).  It allows users […]

With the recent, high-profile public discourse surrounding the potential for virulent outbreaks—be they from an outbreak of Avian Flu or an incident of bioterrorism—epidemiological modeling has been a vital tool used to assess the threat of an epidemic facing the nation. Epidemiological models often have two key components, a method of modeling the spread of […]

In class a large focus has been on links and how they increasingly make the world seem to be a smaller space. An issue that comes up because of this is the smaller seperation or space a node is able to take up the less privacy that node has. Privacy is also affected […]

Over a month ago, a blog post written about customer reviews on carpets made it to the front page on Digg.com with 569 diggs. The blogger noticed on HomeDepot.com that three comments posted within the span of three months seemed to be very similar. He noted:

“I suppose it could be the same person who made […]

When reviewing the class blog, one can see that most of our news stories come from very few sources. Major examples being, Wired.com, Slashdot.org, CNN.com, and other major news sources. This means, that by the time I read an article online, and then go to check the blog to post about it, *someone* has […]

In a recent Wired interview[i], Fred Vogelstein asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the current number and future scale of Google’s data centers, to which Schmidt responds, “I think my overall description would be in the dozens. There are a few very large ones, some of which have been leaked to the press. But in […]