Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Wisdom of Crowds





The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, first published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

The book relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally understood. Its central thesis, that a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts, draws many parallels with statistical sampling.

2 comments:

... said...

LIndas Fotos.Parabens!

divinewabisabi said...

I love these images... they're so beautiful, but they also make me kind of nervous... I don't really like being in the middle of that many people... they're really great to look at from afar and above, though. Makes me think of the people like a school of fish... like would they all react like a herd.. do people's individual instincts relax when there's a crowd? Do they do whatever the crowd does?