Almost immediately upon opening to the public, the London Bridge Walkway noticably swayed. Engineers investigated. Turns out, the bridge was built assuming that everyone would walk in a random fashion over it. However, studies reveal that pedestrians unconsciously walk in unison: we unconsciously walk in order, bringing what engineer calls "order out of chaos." In other words, the bridge was built according to chaos theory; however, humans do not like chaos, they like order. I find this fascinating because I have a background in political statistics (I teach the introductory doctoral social science stat's course for Indiana Univ of Pennsylvania's PhD program in Admin and Leadership studies) and I always tell my students that "ours is a probabilistic universe." meaning that there is no true randomness: randomness is only an abstract concept. There is order everywhere, and it is called "probability." I encountered this years ago when I needed to use a random number generator with a main frame computer: the computer operator asked me, "how random do you want it?" Turns out, there are different random number generators, some more random than others. I thought that was mind blowing: there is no true randomness. there is order everywhere, even when you try to generate random numbers, there is order. I tested this at the univ of michigan, where I constructed variance-covariance matrices out of random numbers: there was always eigenvalues, or a statistical representation of variance (order) however slight. As I explain to my students, "anything is possible, however some things are more probable than others."
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