Information Cascade in Swarms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395630/
Information cascade can be described as a phenomena that occurs mostly during the decision making process, where many people respond to something in the same way from information of a past person’s decision. This phenomena can be seen in many places in the real world, from stocks to social media. In this blog post I will be talking about information cascade in swarms.
In swarms, information is everything, it is currency, communication, direction, and etc. So when analyzing something as vital as information and observing the mode of travel (cascade), there are some interesting things that are found. Since information is so important in swarms, it is not quite as simple like a sudden change in behavior as one might think, they are in fact precisely determined, and computed traveling in a wave-like ripple to other members of the swarm. Also, the article goes in to talking about the role active information storage plays in information cascades. It seems that information cascades, well the effectiveness of it, is very dependent on the AIS of animals as they needed a threshold of AIS in order to coordinate better allowing a fluid flow of information cascade. It can be seen that information cascade is necessary for coordination of swarms and is a crucial part of the swarms dynamics.