Eddie Lee (Cornell University)
Abstract. Statistical physics provides a natural language for studying collective behavior. Despite the fact that arguments from statistical physics typically deal with large systems in the thermodynamic limit, concepts from statistical physics still provide a rigorous and quantitative framework for modeling strongly finite social systems. Some recent examples include the motion of bird flocks, firing patterns in neural networks, and election statistics. It has been argued these systems are near critical points or show universal scaling curves because they display regularities in large-scale behavior that are independent of the microscopic details. I will talk about our work on voting in the US Supreme Court and on conflict in pigtailed macaques where we see hints of how we might connect with these ideas from statistical physics even in the small system limit.