Elections are a well-documented example of collective human decision-making, with voting data available for elections globally over several decades. SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Aanjaneya Kumar, along with former colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER)...

A game of chess requires its players to think several moves ahead, a skill that computer programs have mastered over the years. Back in 1996, an IBM supercomputer famously beat the then world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Later, in 2017, an artificial intelligence (AI) program developed by Google...

The math that describes the branching pattern of trees in nature also holds for trees depicted in art—and may even underlie our ability to recognize artworks as depictions of trees....

During the Super Bowl, every decision matters. With millions of fans watching, the game often comes down to a single play call. And no call is more scrutinized than what a coach decides to do on fourth down. Punt? Attempt a field goal? Or go for it?...

The collective motion of large crowds may be predictable past a certain density of people in a given area, according to a study published in Nature. The findings, based on four years of observations at a traditional Spanish festival, offer insights that could help to predict dangerous crowd behavior...

In India, many kids who work in retail markets have good math skills. They can quickly perform a range of calculations to complete transactions. But as a new study shows, these kids often perform much worse on the same kinds of problems as they are taught in the classroom. This happens even though...

So-called Rayleigh–Bloch waves can release an enormous amount of energy that can damage technical systems under certain circumstances. They only exist below a precisely defined cut-off frequency; above this, they disappear abruptly. Strangely enough, however, there are isolated high frequencies at...

A new study in Nature Communications explores the dynamics of higher-order novelties, identifying fascinating patterns in how we combine existing elements to create novelty, potentially reshaping our understanding of human creativity and innovation....

How clans form and evolve within human societies has been modeled using a simple computer model developed by a RIKEN researcher and a collaborator. This demonstration opens the way to modeling complex human social phenomena using simple models....

The temperature changes hour to hour and day to day; exchange rates behave no differently. Wherever studies of the variability of similar one-dimensional time series are concerned, analyses based on multifractals have managed to gain recognition. Now, these tools have been developed and successfully...