06/01/2010-06/4/2010 Week One
This week was spent moving in and particpating in orientation events. Our mentor, Dr. Midge Cozzens, was abroad
but left us with some game theory notes to read and understand.
06/07/2010-06/11/2010 Week Two
After meeting with our mentor on Friday, Jim, Ajay, and I
were given articles on viral marketing in social networks to look over. I read a few of them
and took a lot of notes that were useful for our presentation on Friday. One of the papers mentioned human sexual
contact as a social network that can model the spread of STDs. This subject interests me, but I'm not sure if it will
be too complex of a project for me based on my current knowledge. Jim, Ajay, and I each worked on a section of our presentation
and delivered the final product on Friday morning.
06/14/2010-06/18/2010 Week Three
Dr. Cozzens had us work with common graphs, like Harary, complete, and grid graphs, to see if we could
find any dominating sets of nodes.
06/21/2010-06/25/2010 Week Four
I tried to model product marketing using a sequential game.
06/28/2010-07/02/2010 Week Five
I finally decided to abandon the idea of marketing in a social network and pursue
my original thought involving sexual social networks. Game theory seems to have the most applicable
methods for such a social network.
07/06/2010-07/09/2010 Week Six
I narrowed my subject to the sexual social network of college students. I have begun to create
a game between 1 college male and 1 college female in which they each must choose to use protection or not. I have
created a utility function based on number of partners within the past 12 months, number of unprotected partners, number of alcoholic beverages,
on birth control (female), and type of relationship between players.
07/12/2010-07/16/2010 Week Seven
I changed my utility function numerous times and have finally decided on a function.
I no longer include the type of relationship between partners because it complicates things too much. I spent
the week continuing to work on my game as well as preparing for Friday's presentation.
07/19/2010-07/22/2010 Week Eight
The majority of my time has been spent finalizing a paper on my summer research. Not much
progress has been made in furthering my results since last week. As I write this, I am waiting to meet with my
mentor for the last time as part of the DIMACS REU 2010 summer program.
