Amazing Starling Flocks Are Flying Avalanches

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Amazing Starling Flocks Are Flying Avalanches
Brandon Keim, Wired, May 23, 2014
I'm giving a talk on MOOC research on Friday, and while I've previously documented my thoughts on research methods (or the lack of same) the question nonetheless occurred to me, "how do you research chaotic systems like MOOCs?" Analytics aren't really useful, as numbers and quantities are essentially meaningless. Then I wondered, how do scientists research murmurations? These are flocks of songbirds that act as one fluid whole, like a network. More...