In prediction markets, people use fictional money to invest in the possibility of certain events; the trading price of a proposition can be interpreted as the probability that the event will occur or that a parameter will fall within a certain interval. They are commonly used to predict the outcome of elections, movies, and sporting […]

If you were to ask any ordinary American the question “Are fatty foods bad for your health?” that person would probably confidently reply, “Yes! They are.” Then if you were to ask, “Why do you believe this?” the most honest answer that they can give you is “Umm…because everyone says so.” For […]

In September of 2005, players in Blizzard’s incredibly popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft, started dropping dead from a new disease accidentally introduced by Blizzard in an update to the game. The problem started when Blizzard’s programmers added a new instance, which is a separate dungeon disconnected from the outside world that players can enter to […]

In 2001, George Akerlof won a Nobel Prize in economics for his theoretical work on what is commonly known as the market of lemons. This term applies to market exchanges where there is asymmetric information between buyers and sellers, and it is usually associated with the used car industry. In this business, buyers do no […]

A post written a week ago about the popularity of Flickr users features effects of free versus pro accounts and the “Flickr Star System.” Now to further stimulate interest on Flickr, we can discuss a model of Flickr’s social cascades, proposed by Meeyoung Cha, Alan Mislove, Ben Adams and Krishna P. Gummadi […]

When someone mentions school shootings, we generally think of it as a typically ‘American’ phenomenon.  Indeed, if you look at histories or timelines of school shootings, the US seems to dominate the records.  Michael Moore’s famous documentary reveals how violent American culture is and seems to point the finger in that direction.  But in light […]

 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immunization29-2009mar29,0,3148179.story?page=1 California Schools have recently seen a large rise in the number of elementary school students who are not receiving immunizations. Although these students still only make up a small percentage overall, parents who do not immunize their children are likely to send their children to the same school. Many of these parents fear that vaccinations could lead […]

The other day, someone reminded me of the health craze a couple of years ago involving trans-fat. Laws were passed attempting to ban this horrible substance from foods in restaurants, every other food package in the grocery store had a “trans-fat free” label, and people worried about the effects of this chemical […]

Following the crowd—how far does this idea go?
In our class textbook, Professor Kleinberg and Professor Easley write that “an information cascade has the potential to occur when people make decisions sequentially, with later people watching the actions of earlier people, and from these actions inferring something about what the earlier people […]

Link: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/how-the-low-fat-low-fact-cascade-just-keeps-rolling-along/
In “How the Low-Fat, Low-Fact Cascade Just Keeps Rolling Along”, New York Times science columnist John Tierney discusses the effects of informational cascades in the scientific world. Tierney describes a general definition of information cascades and illustrates examples such as the belief in low fat diets prolonging life and “the crusade […]