Imagine 19th century England, and you are in a middle of a crowd fair with a big, musculated Ox being shown at the center. You are asked to make a guess of the weight of the animal, as well as everyone around in the county fair. How well close do you think the average guess of the crowd will be?
Well this actually happen and scientist Francis Galton, who was conducting the experiment, made a surprising realization when the average from the crown deviated less than 1% than the official weight of the animal, 1,207 pounds. This is the first documented observation of the Wisdom of Crowds, a phenomenon in which a large group collectively outperforms individual experts in making predictions or decisions.
This topic has been explored since and proved accurate in different domains like economics, agriculture, etc. More recently, James Surowiecki's explored in his books that for the Wisdom of Crowds to work, the group needs to have diverse set of people, they need to be independent and able to draw on their own knowledge and a trustful way to collect and aggregate the predictions need to be in place.
When you are working on a topic where there are a lot of unknowns, this can be a good tool to apply. By encouraging the participation of individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge, we can harness the crowd's collective intelligence and make more informed decisions.
Craving more? Check out the source behind this Brain Snack!
