A prank call transcript from ZUG.

What happens when you ask a credit card company the same security questions they ask you?

VISA: …And for security, I just need your mother’s maiden name?

JOHN HARGRAVE: [I tell him] And Barry, for security purposes, I also need your mother’s maiden name.

VISA: Uh … my mother’s maiden name, sir?

JH: Uh-huh.

VISA: OK. Uh … please hold for a moment, sir.

[Hold time of 3:54]

VISA: Yes, thank you for holding. This is cardmember services, my name is Isabelle. May I have your 15-digit card number, please?

JH: Sure. [I give it to her] What happened to Barry? I was just on the phone with him and then there was a very long pause.

VISA: OK, for some reason you got transferred to the fraud department. I’m going to have to transfer you back to customer service.

JH: The fraud department?

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There was this talk (by M. Dahleh) on modeling whether distributed learning occurs in a social network, i.e., is the crowd always right? The problem model was like this: there is a “truth” which is either 0 or 1, representing some binary preference. Then in a connected graph representing a learning network, each node makes a binary decision (0 or 1 again) based on an independent noisy read on the “truth,” as well as the decisions made by some or all of its neighbors who have already made a decision. (Each nodal decision is made once and binding, so there is a predefined decision-making order among the nodes.)

This is an interesting question because at first thought, one would think that in a large enough network, a sufficient number of independent reads on the truth will occur in the aggregate to allow at least the later-deciding nodes to get a really good estimate of the truth. This is the basis of the folk belief in “wisdom of the crowd.” However, this is not what happens all the time.

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