The term “Penn Faces” originates from the University of Pennsylvania. It refers to the phenomenon where students maintain a facade of happiness and success, even if they are struggling internally. This facade creates an impression that everyone around them is doing well, which can lead to feelings of isolation and inadequacy for those who are struggling but don’t want to show it. The constant pressure to appear perfect exacerbates stress, anxiety, and depression....

Just-kidding. This is the real 40 questions that lead to falling in love, written by Edward Dean Melinat as part of his 1991 dissertation Intimacy: Negotiating Closeness and Distance. Appendix G: Questions and Tasks for Getting Close (Instructions: do each question in order, don’t skip. When being asked a question, share your answer with your partner. Then let him or her share their answer to the same question with you. Alternate who goes first to read and intepret the questions....

Mutual vulnerability and informational disclosure fosters closeness. One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure. Aron et al. 1997. And here’s the infamous 36 questions of love that structuralize the issue. The 36 questions in the study are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one. Set I Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?...

introduction A fascinating thing about psychology and economic research is that we can easily relate them with our lives. This result in some works being ‘mentioned’ in general articles abusively to an extent that almost everyone knows it in some way. It all started with a NY Times article of Mandy Len Carton, To Fall in Love With Anyone, DO THIS. The author discussed her experience in experimenting the ‘36-questions’ that, supposedly, would make people fall in love with one another....

Regulation restricts the action of economic agents—in general. It is omnipresent. Why does regulation exist? In a free-market economy, why does the government choose to place restrictions on the decisions of certain agents and actions? George Stigler (1911-1991) introduced his “Theory of Economic Regulation” in 1971 trying to answer this question in a well-established framework, on the basis of some previous empirical arguments such as Normative Analysis as a Positive Theory (NPT) or Capture Theory (CT)....

In an enchanting solo that captures the essence of Frederick Ashton’s choreographic genius, Marianela Nunez transforms the stage into a canvas of poetic motion in her rendition of the Female Variation from “Les Rendezvous.” Recorded unofficially and shared on Bilibili, Nunez’s performance is a masterclass in balletic expression, marrying the technical with the emotional in a dance that feels like a living artwork. The dance is light-heartedly sweet. Nela showed of her brilliance in mastering the emotion while displaying superior technique....

June 18, The Royal Ballet presented three of Ashton’s most celebrated and expertly choreographed pieces set to music by Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff and Auber. This mixed programme opens with the buoyant Les Rendezvous, a fizzing succession of dances following a group of friends who meet in a park. The Dream, Ashton’s witty and tender reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, follows set to Felix Mendelssohn’s gossamer light music. The one-act ballet follows two pairs of mortal lovers, their fates at the hands of Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of Fairies....

Following yesterday’s post (here), let’s delve deeper into Stackelberg Games and the key points of the paper, particularly the addition of context to the problem setting. Regret Minimization in Stackelberg Games with Side Information Keegan Harris, Zhiwei Steven Wu, Maria-Florina Balcan (2024) | paper’s arxiv link recap of the mode: A Stackelberg Security Game is a structured competitive setting involving a defender and an attacker. The defender commits to a strategy $ \mathbf p \in \mathbb{R}^n $ over $ n $ targets, and the attacker selects a target....

Of course, the general purpose of an academic presentation is multifaceted (see an older post about it), as discussed here. Nevertheless, I’ve once heard someone say that the key purpose of a talk at a conference is to make your audience interested in reading your work after the talk ends. I attended the RAIN seminar yesterday at Y2E2, Stanford, where Nina Balcan presented one of her latest works. Personally, I have a general interest in research that involves complex human behaviors....

I had the very fortune to listen to Nina Balcan giving a talk on one of her latest work, Online learning in Stackelberg Security Games: ABSTRACT In a Stackelberg Security Game, a defender commits to a randomized deployment of security resources, and an attacker best responds by attacking a target that maximizes their utility. While algorithms for computing an optimal strategy for the defender to commit to have been used in several real-world applications, deployed applications require knowledge about the utility function of the potential attacker....