Chinese Clustering – Follow-up

I usually don’t write follow-ups, but this is too good not to be written. Yesterday late at night I published the post on how clustering occurs in groups with the example of the Chinese clustering in the courses that I take at ERIM.
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Today one Chinese colleague, let’s call him G, changed his usual behavior (I believe reading the post had something to do with it) and in the amphitheater changed his usual place. He was first to come into the class room and I was the third so I was able to observe. As I love experiments, well I just sat back and watched how the colleagues take their places in the room. I had about 15 minutes of observation.
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The first thing I noticed is that the first Chinese colleague that came into the classroom went directly to G and talked a little, afterword taking a sit in the row in front of him. Next the PhD students came and they all kept their usual places forming the PhD sector on the right side of the amphitheater (G was on the left side and I was in the middle). Next another Chinese colleague came in and was a little disorientated that her usual entourage wasn’t where they used to be. She decided to sit on the left side of the room two rows in front of G and one row in front of the other Asian colleague that came before her. Next one Dutch colleague that usually sits on the left side (I told you that people are coherent with their previous behavior) is confused for a second to see the Chinese there, but he takes a sit next to one of our Chinese colleagues. The Chinese PhD student was also coherent with his previous behavior and sat on the right side in the PhD sector. One Chinese student was absent.
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Up to now all of our Asian friends were coherent with their previous behavior – the PhD student was in his previous group and the master students from China kept clustering even if they changed the sector of clustering. Then the professor came into the classroom and next another Chinese colleague came in. Now let’s see what happened: she looked at the center side (where the Chinese sat before this week), then looked after them and saw them on the left side, but… she broke the cluster and sat in the center. Two minutes after the course started another Chinese colleague came. Being late she took the first seat next to the door (ironically the person next to her was the Chinese PhD student).
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Most interesting is that none of the two colleagues that were late didn’t change her place during the brake to join the cluster. Another interesting thing is that other European colleagues that sat on the left side of the room were also coherent with the previous behavior and, thus, they mixed with the Chinese cluster.