Product Description

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1347 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-16
• Released on: 2005-08-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge. Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Surowiecki first developed his ideas for Wisdom of Crowds in his “Financial Page” column of The New Yorker. Many critics found his premise to be an interesting twist on the long held notion that Americans generally question the masses and eschew groupthink. “A socialist might draw some optimistic conclusions from all of this,” wrote The New York Times. “But Surowiecki’s framework is decidedly capitalist.” Some reviewers felt that the academic language and business speak decreased the impact of the argument. Still, it’s a thought-provoking, timely book: the TV studio audience of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire guesses correctly 91 percent of the time, compared to “experts” who guess only 65 percent correctly. Keep up the good work, comrades.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From AudioFile
What does guessing the weight of an ox at a country fair have to do with the 9/11 attacks? How does a flock of birds relate to a traffic jam? Why doesn't collective wisdom believe in collective wisdom? Addressing complex and sociological theories, James Surowiecki explores these and other questions as he explains how groups of people, in specific kinds of circumstances, can reach intelligent, accurate decisions that can then go horribly wrong. The material is complex, and narrator Erik Singer is wise to stay out of the way, delivering a clear, straightforward reading with a tone of scientific professionalism. The strength and warmth in his voice do well to engage listeners with the ideas--as do his frequent dashes of humor. While the subject matter is weighty, Singer makes listening to it effortless. R.G.M. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Hilarious!
Hee, hee, hee! This title and this book sure look funny right now (September 22nd, 2008). Do we follow the wisdom of the crowds on Wall Street (which, if left to its own devises will continue to drive financial titans into bankrupcy), or the machinations of the dubious experts (Paulson & Bernanke), who will put us on the hook for hundreds of billions for years to come?

Maybe it's time to dust off that 19th Century classic "The Madness of Crowds" instead of reading this smug balderdash.

Why don't quantum physicists let a crowd predict the Higgs' particle mass-energy?
The author's thesis is that the answers of huge numbers of people tend to be more accurate than those of individuals even if these individuals are experts in the specific subject. He makes clear that this is not true for any specific trial in which one individual might score better than the average, but in a series of trials, the crowd outperforms any individual. The author also explains "magnification " of mistakes by peer conformance, a phenomenon that does not occur when the answer comes from a random crowd. Results from crowds or groups should be averaged and not "consensed" in order to obtain unbiased results.

In general I found the author's thesis quite interesting. During an exercise in class on peer conformance, we have seen, how the group's consensus gave a worse result than the best individual answer. Thus I agree with the author that peer conformance is not generating the best results. On the other hand, I doubt that this approach would work with more complex things than assigning magnitudes like weight, value, size, etc. to a common item. I do not believe that this method would come up with a cure for cancer or even assigning a magnitude like mass to a not so well known object like for example a W boson or a quark. It would also be interesting to find out if the crowds can predict the energy at which the 3 forces of nature unite (or even the four forces, including gravity).

All in all a good book.

wisdom of crowds
As the title suggests, this books attempts to explore the collective intelligence of crowds. It covers a variety of settings, from traffic jams to the stock market performance. The book reminds me of Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point" but feels a bit more cerebral and densely written.

In talking about the wisdom of crowds, Surowiecki recounts a 1958 study that demonstrates the collective wisdom of groups. Students were asked to meet someone in NYC. They didn't know where to meet, and had no way to talk to the other person ahead of time. Yet the majority of students chose the very same meeting place: the information booth at Grand Central station. Not knowing what time they were supposed to meet, just about all of the students said they would show up at the stroke of noon. "In other words, if you dropped two law students at either end of the biggest city in the world and told them to find each other, there was a very good chance they'd end up having lunch together" (p. 91).

All told, a fun read.