[HN Gopher] Mathematicians uncover the logic behind how people w...
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       Mathematicians uncover the logic behind how people walk in crowds
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2025-03-24 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | Looks like they assumed that all pedestrians walk (1) at the same
       | speed, and (2) directly toward their predetermined destinations.
       | 
       | Those assumptions might be good enough for modeling students
       | walking to & from classes at MIT. But more generally? Nope.
        
       | slowtrek wrote:
       | Have we uncovered how crowds swarm digital content? It feels like
       | these hidden algorithms trapped away inside Meta probably have
       | the answer as well. Those would be meaningful research papers
       | from Meta if they were ever to do it.
        
         | kulahan wrote:
         | I'm sure _how_ they swarm digital content is well-understood
         | (internal to these companies, at least). They're interested in
         | the _why_ , though. Being able to make viral content on demand
         | would be incredibly valuable.
        
       | foundart wrote:
       | Interesting. I'd be curious to see how this logic varies in
       | different places around the world.
        
         | randomNumber7 wrote:
         | Are there countries where people do not try to get to their
         | target location without bumping in someone?
        
       | MITSardine wrote:
       | It's curious how Man does these things naturally, but needs many
       | man-years of studies and experimentation to arrive at gross
       | approximations of how we function.
       | 
       | All the logic of how we move in crowds is in our brains, we apply
       | it every day. Yet we don't know it explicitly. Something that we
       | do consciously, even.
       | 
       | But, in this case, it's rather emergent behaviour that's pointed
       | out. We know how we behave how the person in front of us steps
       | out of line: we move to the side ourselves or slow down. What's
       | less obvious is when and how this cascades onto the whole crowd.
       | 
       | I don't know exactly what their physical analogies with fluid
       | dynamics are, but this sounds like turbulence.
        
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