New GPS Navigator Relies On 'Wisdom of the Crowds'

Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times is running an article on Dash Express, a new navigation system for automobiles that not only receives GPS location data, but broadcasts information about its travels. Information is passed back to Dash over a cellular data network, where it is shared with other users to let them know if there are slowdowns or traffic jams on the road ahead. The real benefit of the system isn't apparent until enough units are collecting data in a given area - so Dash distributed over 2,000 prototype units to test drivers in 25 large cities."

Comments

Grossly inacurate headline!

[meburke]

"The Wisdom of the Crowds" does not apply here. TWOTC applies to aggregated decisions made my groups of people. This is more akin to a routing algorithm than individual assessment of a condition.

If you assume that most people don't know anything about a certain condition, those who don't know anything will probably cancel each other out 50-50, but the percentage of people who are knowledgeable about the condition will make more correct assessment. Therefore, when all the choices/assessments are aggregated, the knowledgeable choices will tip the median assessment in the right direction, and the crowd's assessment will be appear to be more reliable than individual choices.

In this particular case, there are several specific traffic algorithms that apply to a variety of traffic patterns, and since the information is being fed back in near real-time, it makes the service more useful.