http://www.environ.ie/en/LocalGovernment/Voting/News/MainBody,20056,en.htm
Ireland voted Thursday to reject electronic voting and return to paper votes.  While in the US we generally use the simple plurality voting method, in Ireland, they use more sophisticated methods - Single transferable vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote), which, for the presidential election, simplifies to instant runoff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting).
Their choice of sophisticated voting methods makes it much more […]

I recently came across this article discussing the privacy implications of a Facebook’s general search tool.  The tool comes into play when someone searches the name of a Facebook user using a general search engine like Google or Yahoo.  Facebook then randomly links the person being searched to eight randomly chosen “Friends” of […]

The ongoing efforts to stop drug trafficking have disrupted and disturbed some drug trades temporarily, but have largely had little to no effect on degrading or destroying the networks created to traffic illegal drugs. The reason behind this, Phil Williams argues in his article “The nature of drug-trafficking networks”, is because the network structure of […]

Economics tells you that demand decreases as result of a price increase. This is seemingly not the case for luxury goods. People who aren’t status-seeking often find it absurd for those who spend, for example, thousands of dollars on a purse. Luxury commodity goods have an extraordinary power that their cheaper fellows don’t: representation of […]

Over the next few weeks, the largest act of democracy this world has seen will take place in the most unlikely of places. Though it may seem a long time for such an act to occur, over the course of April and May, a 28 day democratic election will take place in […]

Behind the beautiful models, shiny-headed charismatic host, and shaddowy banker figure lies a deceptive mathematical game. Contestants on Deal or No Deal are asked to choose one case out of 26 which are presented to them by 26 lovely models. Each case contains an amount of money between one penny and […]

If you have not yet seen a clip of Susan Boyle’s performance last week on “Britain’s Got Talent”, you can help contribute to this network phenomenon by checking out the Youtube video.

Susan Boyle, a forty-seven year old Scottish village dweller, exploded to worldwide fame last week when an online video of her “Britain’s Got […]

Provided that no outside information is given and the choice is not changed, a cascade will continue indefinitely. One different choice can disrupt a cascade, making it fragile as stated in class. The model used to introduce cascades was built so people would make the same choice beyond a string of two of […]

Links
BBC News - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/more_or_less/5176698.stm
Judith Kleinfeld’s website - http://www.judithkleinfeld.com/
After hearing about the small-world phenomenon and six degrees of separation, it seemed appropriate to search for recent attempts to duplicate Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment from 1967. Some experiments mentioned in lecture today, such as the e-mail experiment by Dodds, Muhammed, and Watts, came up multiple times in […]

What was it about the Furby that made it so popular when it was introduced in 1998? Was it the advanced computer chip that let the Furby “learn” English, or was it that the Furby was the most realistic robot best friend a kid could have? My vote is neither. “Furby Fever” […]