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Crossroads The ACM Magazine for Students

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Association for Computing Machinery

Magazine: Fall 2017 | Volume 24, No. 1

Crossroads

Incentives and Gamification

How to Deal with Stress as a Ph.D. Student

A Brief History of Gamification

MacACM: Encouraging competitive programming via mentorship and outreach

When Communication Trumps Coding

How 1 million app calls can tell you a bit about malware

DEPARTMENT: Blogs

How 1 million app calls can tell you a bit about malware

The XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference coverage, to security and privacy, to CS theory. Selected blog posts, edited for print, are featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety. If you are interested in joining as a student blogger, please contact us.

By Dimitris Mitropoulos

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Intrusion/anomaly detection and malware mitigation

Algorithms versus mechanisms

SECTION: Features: Incentivizing Truthfulness

Algorithms versus mechanisms

Online markets and platforms rely on human user decisions as inputs. This generates the challenge of managing user incentives and misbehaviors as strategic entities. Surprisingly, one can show that designers do not require much additional computational power to overcome this challenge.

By Rad Niazadeh

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Algorithmic game theory and mechanism design, Economics

Spliddit

Spliddit

Spliddit.org is a not-for-profit academic endeavor with the mission to provide free access to sophisticated and provably fair methods developed in the scientific community. Spliddit has been a major driving force for novel theoretical and empirical fair division research.

By Nisarg Shah

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Economics, Market equilibria, User studies

Do Humans Play Equilibrium? Modeling Human Behavior in Computational Strategic Systems

Do Humans Play Equilibrium? Modeling Human Behavior in Computational Strategic Systems

Online auctions and other computational strategic systems where human users interact are usually analyzed based on the assumptions that the users are rational and reach an equilibrium. This article shows that these modeling assumptions lead to significant errors, and that using behaviorally appropriate assumptions is important for achieving credible predictions in such systems.

By Gali Noti

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Algorithmic game theory, Computational pricing and auctions, Economics, Online auctions, Psychology

Differential privacy as a tool for truthfulness in games

Differential privacy as a tool for truthfulness in games

Differential privacy guarantees the input data from a single individual has a very small impact on the output of a computation. Tools from privacy can also be used in game theory and economics to incentivize people to truthfully reveal their data.

By Rachel Cummings

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Algorithmic game theory, Economics, Economics of security and privacy

Incentivizing exploration via information asymmetry

SECTION: Features: Incentivizing Actions and Effort

Incentivizing exploration via information asymmetry

As self-interested individuals make decisions over time, they utilize information revealed by others in the past and produce information that may help others in the future. So how can we incentivize exploration for the sake of the common good?

By Aleksandrs Slivkins

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Algorithmic game theory, Economics, Online learning algorithms, Social networks

Incentives and the crowd

Incentives and the crowd

Crowdsourcing gives us a way to leverage the complementary strengths of humans and machines. But how do we solve the problem of low-quality crowdwork?

By Jennifer Wortman Vaughan

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Collaborative and social computing systems and tools, Computer supported cooperative work, Document management, Economics, Incentive schemes

Games user research and gamification in human-computer interaction

SECTION: Features: Motivating Participation

OPEN ACCESS

Games user research and gamification in human-computer interaction

Video games inspire new tools for creating engaging user experiences.

By Lennart E. Nacke

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Computer games, Human computer interaction (HCI), Interactive games, Massively multiplayer online games

Gamified and persuasive systems as behavior change agents for health and wellness

Gamified and persuasive systems as behavior change agents for health and wellness

Gameful elements and persuasive strategies can motivate and encourage people to take charge of their health and achieve their ultimate wellness goal.

By Dennis L. Kappen, Rita Orji

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Health informatics, Human computer interaction (HCI), Interactive games, User models, User studies

The ethics of gamification

The ethics of gamification

Gamification is manipulation; at least that is what many people think. Because gamification is a powerful tool for modifying behaviors, how we should consider ethics specifically for gamification?

By Andrzej Marczewski

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Codes of ethics, Human computer interaction (HCI), Interactive games, Massively multiplayer online games

Jeremy Irish <br /> Bringing treasure hunting to the modern world

The future of sports and exercise

Gamification and customer loyalty

Haskell a language for modern times

DEPARTMENT: Hello world

Haskell a language for modern times

By Mihai Maruseac

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Functional languages