Schelling’s neighborhood model tells us that the integration of groups in unstable given that two types of people do not want to be in a minority the size of which is somewhere around less than one third of the population. This was said to be the […]

 
I’d like to address an interesting topic of online expert networks. For the purpose of this post, the term ‘expert’ is very loosely interpreted to be anyone with significant knowledge of a topic. Such online networks may be blog communities (such as Expert Voices), online forums, IRC groups, mailing lists, and tracing back […]

 http://www.sbindependent.org/node/1791
As many of us found out, tragedy strikes amongst the Hokies today in Blacksburg, VA. The shooting claimed the lives of 33 people and many are affected by it. Personally, I went to high school in Richmond, VA, and many people I know, friends, schoolmates, mere acquaintances, etc. all are affected.  Many more college and […]

In the past few classes we’ve been discussing how ideas and preferences travel virally through a population until they hit a cluster. A principle assumption throughout these exercises has been the intelligence and logical behavior of the individual. It’s important that once an individual with better information has spoken out against the trend that the […]

As was previously discussed in class, diffusion in networks is a phenomenon that can be modeled mathematically- by taking a diagram of linked nodes and adding the concept of threshold to it. What happens in some cases (like in the infinite linear chain) is that the cascading effect leads to everyone adopting the idea/trend that […]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/27/magazines/fortune/fastforward_photobucket.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007032808

The above article explores the success story behind Photobucket, one of the largest photo-sharing websites currently available. Experts attribute Photobucket’s success to the flexibility it offers when it comes to […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1176868800&en=a84a2d9cef4524e5&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin
    Several weeks ago, we talked about the way Google used an algorithm to sell search and contextual based ads to advertisers with a maximum profit. However, there is obviously more to online advertising than just ads that appear based on user inputs, and, as stated in the article, Google has been looking to increase […]

Source: Million-Dollar Murray
This article from the New Yorker tells the story of a homeless man in Reno, Nevada. He is constantly being arrested for drunkiness and needs to go to the hospital for various injuries. The story serves as a segway to the nature of homelessness in the United States. The article references a study […]

http://pubs.wri.org/pubs_content_text.cfm?ContentID=575
One of the largest problems facing environmentalists is that of cascade effects surrounding the possible extinction of one species or another. Especially when a “Keystone” predator, one that controls the surrounding population, vanishes, the effect creates a cascade, where the predator’s main pray multiplies and drives out other minor pray, and then in turn consume […]

If you have been reading the news lately, you will have read about Don Imus, a former CBS radio host who was fired last Thursday for calling members of Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s.”
What led to his firing? At a superficial glance, perhaps it was completely due to Imus’s bad judgment in using offensive […]