Mobiles study the clustering patterns at Kumbh Mela
.technology review by MIT Mobile phones have revolutionized the way scientists study human behavior, allowing them to watch people on a scale that has never been previously imagined. This work has revealed patterns of sleep, mating strategies, and commuting behaviors on huge scales. It has even allowed demographers to estimate the wealth of entire countries. One thing that this work has revealed is that collective decision-making can be very different from the decisions that humans make individually. In particular, humans in groups have a strong affinity to pick out others who are like them. So minority groups tend to stick together. This behavior has been observed on relatively small scales, but an interesting question is whether it also occurs on the largest scales as well. Today, we find out thanks to the work of Ian Barnett at Harvard University and a few pals who have used mobile phone records to study group behavior at a Hindu religious festival called the Kumbh ...