link to news zone link to document abstracts link to short briefings documents        news resources at abelard.org interesting site links at abelard's news and comment zone orientation at abelard's news and comment zone

back to abelard's front page
site map

reviews

article archives at abelard's news and comment zonebook and other reviews archives
1 2 3 VI-2004: 07 13
index of book reviews by abelard
New translation, the Magna Carta

 

book and other reviews

index of book reviews by abelard

some crowds are not so stupid

Mencken said:

“ Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

However,

“[Surowiecki’s] thesis is that society is able to get along from day to day [New York Times: nominal registration required] because people exercise a kind of rationality as a group that allows them (or us, rather) to handle three kinds of problems. Surowiecki defines the first as cognition problems: questions that have ''definitive'' or factual solutions. If you ask a group of people to estimate how many jelly beans are in a jar, for example, the average of their answers is likely to be much more accurate than any given individual's guess. This seems counterintuitive, but there is a considerable body of experimental evidence to support it. Aside from tests involving college sophomores, there are data from ''Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?'' [...].”

As counterintuitive as it sounds, however, the mathematics work so long as Surowiecki's three key criteria - independence, diversity, and decentralization - are satisfied. "If you ask a large enough group," he says, "to make a prediction or estimate a probability," the errors they make cancel each other out. "Subtract the error, and you're left with the information." In this fashion, the TV studio audience of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," guessed the right answer to questions 91 percent of the time, torching the "experts," who guessed the right answer only 65 percent of the time.”

The wisdom of crowds by J. Surowiecki

The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki, May 2004, Doubleday Books, hbk 0385503865

$17.46 [amazon.com] {advert} / £13.20 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}


advertising
disclaimer


You are here: reviews at for 13 June 2004 < News < Home

email abelard email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 2003, 13 june


all rights reserved

the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/news/review040613.htm

vaiable words
prints as variable A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)

navigation bar ( eight equal segments) on 'health archives 1 - news and comment on abelard.org' page, linking
to abstracts, the rise and fall of the Church of Rome,children and tv violence, short descriptions of documents on www.abelard.org the rise and fall of the Church of Rome - abelard welcome to outer mongolia - how to get around this ger multiple uses for this glittering entity e-mail abelard at abelard@abelard.org the confusions of Gödel (in four parts) - abelard children and tv violence - abelard