Strange Phenomena

Yesterday, after teaching rising 9-11 graders the basics in Chinese, the teacher I was helping out asked me if I wanted to come watch them play foursquare during their recess time.  Foursquare?  High schoolers?  But sure enough, all the students quietly lined up without any deliberation of rules and played four square in boxes much smaller than the usual four square setup.  My friend told me that no such debate had ever occurred - the kids just played.  We watched them and couldn't quite figure out the rules.  Sometimes there were 2 bounces allowed and for some reason, slams were heavily avoided.  Surreal?

Intrigued, I asked some of the administrators there.  One of them told me about how foursquare time was, for lack of a better word, "sacred".  For a teacher to set up a recess outside of everyone's appointed recess would be enough for the entire class to mutiny.  Another said that it has it's own name, Larryball, after a counselor who created the game and the phenomena over 10 years ago, and its rules could be delineated on Wikipedia.  (No such luck - the article did not exist)


On a completely unrelated note, here is a basic (and not an entirely scientifically sound) study that I conducted after Ashley's class activity.  We roughly (very roughly) assume an equal distribution of the orange, green, black, and blue "bugs" (pieces of paper on the ground) initially as shown in Image 1.  Image 2 shows the new populations distribution after four generations of predators (students).  What do you think accounts for this phenomenon?  The phenomenon is correct even if other things aren't. 

Image 1: Initial Population Distribution

Image 2: Population Distribution after four generations