Refreshments today will be served at 2:00 p.m. in the James A. Yorke Rotunda of the William E. Kirwan Hall (Mathematics Building), followed by the 3 p.m. lecture in 1410 John S. Toll Physics Building.  Naomi E. Leonard, Princeton University Fast and Flexible Group Decision-Making
A wide range of animals live and move in groups. Many animals do better in groups than alone when, for example, foraging for food, migrating, and avoiding predators. A key to group success is social interaction. Less well understood is how a group, with no centralized control, is capable of the fast and flexible decision-making required to carry out its tasks in an environment with uncertainty, variability, and dynamic change.
I will introduce an approach to modeling group decision-making dynamics that reveals the fundamental importance of nonlinearity, feedback, and social interaction. Analysis of the model provides new insights into fast and flexible decision-making: how indecision can be broken as fast as it becomes costly, and how sensitivity to stimulus can be tuned as context and environment change. I will discuss the significance of these results for the study and design of collective intelligence in nature and technology.