Yankee doodling

The Mathematics of Doodling

Wondering about a childhood doodle compels us to ask a series of questions, which will lead us on a tour of increasingly sophisticated ideas from many parts of mathematics. Let me tell you about a doodle I did when I was very small, and the mathematics that flows inevitably from it. It looks like play, but in my mind this is what mathematics is really about: finding patterns in nature, explaini...

Sam Harvey Yankee Surgeon—Philosopher

1 Bidding Strategies in Internet Yankee Auctions

A bidding strategy commonly observed in Internet auctions, though not frequently in live auctions, is that of “jump-bidding,” or entering a bid larger than necessary to be a current high bidder. In this paper, we argue that the cost associated with entering on-line bids and the uncertainty concerning bidding competition -both of which distinguish Internet from live auctions -can explain this ph...

Doodling: A Gaming Paradigm for Generating Language Data

With the advent of the increasingly participatory Internet and the growing power of the crowd, “Serious Games” have proven to be a fertile approach for gathering task-specific natural language data at very low cost. In this paper we outline a game we call Doodling, based on the sketch-andconvey metaphor used in the popular board game Pictionary, with the goal of generating useful natural langua...

Replicating Online Yankee Auctions to Analyze Auctioneers' and Bidders' Strategies

Dynamic price setting mechanisms such as online auctions typify the new generation of mercantile processes being used on the WWW. However, arbitrary pricing mechanisms can result in loss of revenue and social capital in markets characterized by tight margins. This work presents a relatively risk-free and cost-effective approach to managing innovation in the area of web-based dynamic price setti...