Guilherme Pontes (Spatial Modeling)

Thursday assignment (04/16/2015)

Why are humans better at understanding patterns than processes?

Because humans are amazing pattern-recognition machines. We have the ability to recognize many different types of patterns and then transform these patterns into concrete, actionable steps.

How do systems store information?

Systems store information in primary, secondary, tertiary and off-line storage depending on what the system is going store.

How do systems learn?

The systems learn to extend what either humans or machine could do on their own. The systems help human experts make better decisions by penetrating the complexity of Big Data.

How do systems adapt?

The systems adapt with a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole that together are able to respond to environmental changes or changes in the interacting parts.

What are the opposing forces that ”keep the drift and tumult of history at bay”?

A kind of self-organizing stickiness that allows the silk weavers to stay huddled together along the same road for a thousand years, while the rest of the world reinvents itself again and again.

Thursday assignment (04/02/2015)

i) A flock, once together, is not guaranteed to keep all of its members. Why do you think this is?

Factors such as ‘alignment’, ‘separation’ and ‘cohesion’, keep all members together of the flock.  If ‘separation’ is greater than ‘cohesion’ of one or a few of the flock members, they will separate from the main flock.

ii) After running the model for a while, all of the birds have approximately the same heading. Why?

Because of the factor of ‘alignment’ force of the main group of birds. This factor pulls the smaller flocks in a relative direction to the main one.

iii) Sometimes a bird breaks away from its flock. How does this happen?

It happens because of the ‘separation’ factor that is greater than the ‘cohesion’ factor of the flock acting upon it, and as a result the bird separates from the flock.