"Wisdom of Crowds" Works For Individuals Too

ideonexus writes "Take a crowd of people and have them guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, and the average of their answers will be remarkably accurate. Now researchers have found the same goes for asking one person to guess about the same thing several times. Accuracy improved when the individual was given longer periods of time between guesses." The anonymous author of the Economist piece, not quoting the researchers, says the finding bolsters the "generate and test" model of creative thinking.

Comments

In related news...

[morgan_greywolf]

In related news, students were found to do far better on multiple choice tests when given an unlimited number of guesses at each question. Even students that didn't study eventually got As.

Re:In related news...

[smallfries]

Not quite... but you are close. It sounds like you're pointing out that anyone will get lucky if given enough chances. These guys are claiming that the average will converge to the ground truth over time. This would need to have guesses with some Gaussian distribution about the correct answer.

If the guesses were uniformly distributed then the average wouldn't tend to the correct answer over time. Of course what is described in the summary has nothing to do with the wisdom of crowds as it is commonly thought of (i.e in markets) where shared information is vital. Instead it is simply an artifact of sampling (which is why the longer gaps are necessary for better accuracy)

So how long is the emperor of China's nose?

[Watson Ladd]

Wisdom of crowds only works when the crowd has some information about the situation. Look at polls about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for more details.

Re:So how long is the emperor of China's nose?

[zappepcs]

Exactly. Penn and Teller asked a group of people if the chemical Dihydrous Monoxide should be banned. Nearly every one of them said yes. The wisdom of crowds is not in and of itself some sort of magic. It is merely an interesting observation.

That your own guesses seem to exhibit the same 'average' correctness as a crowd is bad science IMO. Once you guess at a problem, you're subconsciously directed to think of that problem, thus getting more than a knee jerk reactionary guess. The longer you have to think about it, the longer you have to assimilate information pertaining to the answer.

A little biased

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Granted, the tests were done on the Price is Right.

"600 jelly beans?"

"Higher"

"900?"

"Looower...."

The Delphi Method

[Illbay]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method

Another product of the RAND Corporation.

From the I-am-large-I-contain-multitudes dept.?

[lilomar]

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then! I contradict myself!

Wisdom of the Crowds"

[phoenixwade]

The idea that a group guessing is more accurate than an individual guess, and if you make more than one guess the mean or average of the guesses is more accurate than a single guess?

So, in real world terms, 1000 rednecks are going to be more accurate than one Harvard graduate? (assuming the graduate in question isn't our current President) (if we were guessing the number of pickled eggs in a pickle jar, I'd have to agree... Otherwise, I'm somewhat skeptical of how well this translates beyond the estimation of things.

Re:Wisdom of the Crowds"

[thethibs]

More like it takes a thousand Harvard graduates in conference to show the common sense of one redneck. But who's counting?

Explains

[Paranatural]

This explains why there's so much informative discussion here at slashdot. N o one knows much of anything, but if you throw enough wild assed guesses at something, one of them is bound to be right, right?

Re:Explains

[HairyCanary]

No, I don't think so. It wouldn't be "one of them is bound to be right" -- it would be something more along the lines of "with enough posts, the consensus is likely to be close to reality."

This assumes, of course, that everything in life is like a jar of jellybeans.

Ah duh!

[mspohr]

The amazing discovery they made is that when people had time to think about a question, they gave better answers. This is profound.

Re:Ah duh!

[JustinOpinion]

In fact there is some research that suggests for certain kinds of decisions, more thought is actually counter-productive. That is, initial "gut" decisions are sometimes more optimal than carefully-considered ones (where "optimal" is measured by longer-term happiness/regret of decision). (For instance, check this writeup of this paper, or the associated Slashdot submission.)

The point is that while thinking long and hard about some problems can be helpful (e.g. designing something complex and technical), for other kinds of problems, added thought can hinder (e.g. when there are many confounding unknowns).

Re:Ah duh!

[Talderas]

The point is that while thinking long and hard about some problems can be helpful (e.g. designing something complex and technical), for other kinds of problems, added thought can hinder (e.g. when there are many confounding unknowns).

So that explains why most /.ers are single.

Durr

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, three weeks is plenty of time to look up such an intriguing factoid on the Internet.

Should this be a surprise?

[Kohath]

I thought this was understood.

This is how you are able to catch a ball. Your brain doesn't do a physics calculation and determine where the ball will land. It guesses, watches, refines the guess, repeats, and eventually the guess is close enough so your hand is in the right spot to catch it.