Applause Analysis

This is an idea which occured to me some time back at a conference...

Given a crowded room (say, large lecture auditorium size), there are always some people who are the first to clap, and some the last...

• Are there key people who are clap catalysts?
• Does applause ripple out from them?
• Similarly at the end of applause, are there key people who stop early and encourage the stopping around them.

It boils down to 'does applause propogate and cease randomly, or in waves'?

• If you log the number of applauding people by count against time, do you get a bell curve? (I expect so)

I'm not sure how to test this... large crowd, and some TV analysis software? Microphones per location?

What about a beats per minute clapping rate map of the audience. This would be best done perhaps with microphones on each location so as to measure that locations claps?

Comments and additions, please.

.../Nemo