Pentland’s population-level approach to behavior began in counting beavers from space.

Evidence

Professor Pentland began his intellectual journey as Skinner did, in the study of animal behavior. Where Skinner trained his reasoning on the detailed behaviors of blameless individual creatures, Pentland concerned himself with the gross behavior of animal populations. As a part-time researcher at NASA’s Environmental Research Institute while still an undergraduate, he developed a method for assessing the Canadian beaver population from space by counting the number of beaver ponds: “You’re watching the lifestyle, and you get an indirect measure.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1335