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Metcalfe's Law
Metcalfe's law states that the financial value or influence of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (2). The law is named after Robert Metcalfe and was first proposed in 1980, albeit not in terms of users, but rather of "compatible communicating devices" (e.g., fax machines, telephones). It later became associated with users on the Ethernet after a September 1993 ''Forbes'' article by George Gilder. Network effects Metcalfe's law characterizes many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet, social networking and the World Wide Web. Former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Reed Hundt said that this law gives the most understanding to the workings of the present-day Internet. Mathematically, Metcalfe's Law shows that the number of unique possible connections in an n-node connection can be expressed as the triangular number n(n-1)/2, which is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Break-even Point
The break-even point (BEP) in economics, business—and specifically cost accounting—is the point at which total cost and total revenue are equal, i.e. "even". In layman's terms, after all costs are paid for there is neither profit nor loss. In economics specifically, the term has a broader definition; even if there is no net loss or gain, and one has "broken even", opportunity costs have been covered and capital has received the risk-adjusted, expected return. The break-even analysis was developed by Karl Bücher and Johann Friedrich Schär. Overview The break-even point (BEP) or break-even level represents the sales amount—in either unit (quantity) or revenue (sales) terms—that is required to cover total costs, consisting of both fixed and variable costs to the company. Total profit at the break-even point is zero. It is only possible for a firm to pass the break-even point if the dollar value of sales is higher than the variable cost per unit. This means that the selli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beckstrom's Law
In economics, Beckstrom's law is a model or theorem formulated by Rod Beckstrom. It purports to answer "the decades-old question of 'how valuable is a network'", and states in summary that "The value of a network equals the net value added to each user’s transactions conducted through that network, summed over all users." Law According to its creator, this law can be used to value any network be it social networks, computer networks, support groups and even the Internet as a whole. This new model values the network by looking from the edge of the network at all of the transactions conducted and the value added to each. It states that one way to contemplate the value the network adds to each transaction is to imagine the network being shut off and what the additional transactions costs or loss would be. It can thus be compared to the value of a pizza delivery service offered to its customers. If the pizza delivery service shut down, then the social value generated by its deliveri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-rival Good
An anti-rival good is one where the more people share it, the more utility each person receives. It is the opposite of a rival good. Examples include software and other information goods created through the process of commons-based peer production. The term was coined by economist Steven Weber. An anti-rival good meets the test of a public good because it is non-excludable (freely available to all) and non-rival (consumption by one person does not reduce the amount available for others). However, it has the additional quality of being created by private individuals for common benefit without being motivated by pure altruism, because the individual contributor also receives benefits from the contributions of others. Free open-source software Lawrence Lessig described free and open-source software as anti-rivalrous: "It's not just that code is non-rival; it's that code in particular, and (at least some) knowledge in general, is, as Weber calls it, 'anti-rival'. I am not on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Tao
Terence Chi-Shen Tao (; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian-American mathematician, Fields medalist, and professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences. His research includes topics in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, probability theory, compressed sensing and analytic number theory. Tao was born to Chinese immigrant parents and raised in Adelaide. Tao won the Fields Medal in 2006 and won the Royal Medal and Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014, and is a 2006 MacArthur Fellow. Tao has been the author or co-author of over three hundred research papers, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest living mathematicians. Life and career Family Tao's parents are first generation immigrants from Hong Kong to Australia.'' Wen Wei Po'', Page A4, 24 August ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bitcoin
Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source software, open-source implementation. In 2021, Bitcoin in El Salvador, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender. It is mostly seen as an investment and has been described by some scholars as an economic bubble. As bitcoin is pseudonymous, Cryptocurrency and crime, its use by criminals has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to Legality of cryptocurrency by country or territory, its ban by several countries . Bitcoin works through the collaboration of computers, each of which acts as a Node (networking), node in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Each node maintains an independent copy of a public distributed ledger of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tencent
Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the world's largest company in the video game industry based on its equity investments. Founded in 1998, its subsidiaries globally market various Internet-related services and products, including in entertainment, Artificial intelligence industry in China, artificial intelligence, and other technology. Its twin-skyscraper headquarters, Tencent Binhai Mansion, Tencent Seafront Towers (also known as Tencent Binhai Mansion) are based in the Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Nanshan District of Shenzhen. In December 2023, architect Büro Ole Scheeren unveiled the latest helix-inspired design of Tencent's new global headquarters in Shenzhen. Known as Tencent Helix, it will accommodate more than 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age requirement is 14 years. , Facebook claimed almost 3.07 billion monthly active users worldwide. , Facebook ranked as the List of most-visited websites, third-most-visited website in the world, with 23% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s. Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Odlyzko
Andrew Michael Odlyzko (Andrzej Odłyżko) (born 23 July 1949) is a Polish- American mathematician and a former head of the University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center and of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. He began his career in 1975 at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he stayed for 26 years before joining the University of Minnesota in 2001. Work in mathematics Odlyzko received his B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975. In the field of mathematics he has published extensively on analytic number theory, computational number theory, cryptography, algorithms and computational complexity, combinatorics, probability, and error-correcting codes. In the early 1970s, he was a co-author (with D. Kahaner and Gian-Carlo Rota) of one of the founding papers of the modern umbral calculus. In 1985 he and Herman te Riele disproved the Mertens conjecture. In mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gompertz Function
The Gompertz curve or Gompertz function is a type of mathematical model for a time series, named after Benjamin Gompertz (1779–1865). It is a sigmoid function which describes growth as being slowest at the start and end of a given time period. The right-side or future value asymptote of the function is approached much more gradually by the curve than the left-side or lower valued asymptote. This is in contrast to the simple logistic function in which both asymptotes are approached by the curve symmetrically. It is a special case of the generalised logistic function. The function was originally designed to describe human mortality, but since has been modified to be applied in biology, with regard to detailing populations. History Benjamin Gompertz (1779–1865) was an actuary in London who was privately educated. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1819. The function was first presented in his June 16, 1825 paper at the bottom of page 518. The Gompertz functio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logistic Function
A logistic function or logistic curve is a common S-shaped curve ( sigmoid curve) with the equation f(x) = \frac where The logistic function has domain the real numbers, the limit as x \to -\infty is 0, and the limit as x \to +\infty is L. The exponential function with negated argument (e^ ) is used to define the standard logistic function, depicted at right, where L=1, k=1, x_0=0, which has the equation f(x) = \frac and is sometimes simply called the sigmoid. It is also sometimes called the expit, being the inverse function of the logit. The logistic function finds applications in a range of fields, including biology (especially ecology), biomathematics, chemistry, demography, economics, geoscience, mathematical psychology, probability, sociology, political science, linguistics, statistics, and artificial neural networks. There are various generalizations, depending on the field. History The logistic function was introduced in a series of three papers by Pier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sigmoid Function
A sigmoid function is any mathematical function whose graph of a function, graph has a characteristic S-shaped or sigmoid curve. A common example of a sigmoid function is the logistic function, which is defined by the formula :\sigma(x) = \frac = \frac = 1 - \sigma(-x). Other sigmoid functions are given in the #Examples, Examples section. In some fields, most notably in the context of artificial neural networks, the term "sigmoid function" is used as a synonym for "logistic function". Special cases of the sigmoid function include the Gompertz curve (used in modeling systems that saturate at large values of ''x'') and the ogee curve (used in the spillway of some dams). Sigmoid functions have domain of all real numbers, with return (response) value commonly monotonically increasing but could be decreasing. Sigmoid functions most often show a return value (''y'' axis) in the range 0 to 1. Another commonly used range is from −1 to 1. A wide variety of sigmoid functions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
