PROBLEM-SOLVING
Is being your own crowd a wise move?
The wisdom of crowds operates by exploiting the diversity of views
Crowds of humans can be very good at solving certain kinds of problems. If, for example, you wanted to guess how many bacteria live in Lake Erie, you’d be better off asking a random group of people and averaging the result than trying to answer the question alone. But what if you could be your own crowd by averaging your own guesses? Bizarrely, research suggests this can actually work. The wisdom of crowds operates by exploiting the diversity of views. The technique has been used to improve economic forecasts, doctors’ decisions and weather predictions. But we still have a lot to learn about how and when it works. It can go wrong if the people involved are all biased in similar ways or if one person’s choice influences others. It works better if you ask people what they think and what they expect the popular opinion to be, and look for discrepancies between the two. This draws out the knowledge of informed subgroups. So how about using crowd wisdom without a crowd, harnessing the di...
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