A scientist's experiment at a fair shows the surprising accuracy of crowd guesses. The podcast tests this with listeners guessing a cow's weight. The 'wisdom of the crowds' concept is explored, from stock markets to orange juice prices. The episode is both educational and entertaining.
Collective judgments can be surprisingly accurate, challenging the perception that experts always make better decisions.
Diverse input from a crowd outperforms individual experts, showcasing the power of collaborative perspectives.
Deep dives
The Wisdom of Crowds and Collective Intelligence
Despite individual variations, a group's collective judgment can be surprisingly accurate. The podcast explores the story of Francis Galton, who found that averaging the guesses of a crowd at a fair almost perfectly estimated the weight of an ox. This concept extends to various areas like the stock market, where random collective decisions often yield insightful results. The phenomenon challenges the perception that experts always make better judgments, highlighting the power of collaborative and diverse perspectives.
The Experiment Revisited and Online Crowd Participation
Building on Galton's experiment, the hosts conducted their own cow-weighing experiment at a fair. They invited both fair attendees and online participants worldwide to estimate the cow's weight. The crowd's collective average guess was remarkably close to the actual weight, demonstrating the effectiveness of collective intelligence. Even when comparing experts' guesses, the crowd's average outperformed them, emphasizing the strength of diverse input from different backgrounds.
Lessons Learned and The Uncanny Accuracy of Collective Decisions
The results of the cow-weighing experiment highlighted the eerie accuracy of collective judgment. Despite individual errors, the crowd's average estimate proved remarkably close to the truth, showcasing the wisdom of crowds phenomenon. While individual investors may exhibit irrational behavior in markets, collectively, they tend to set accurate valuations for assets. The podcast concludes that harnessing collective intelligence can lead to surprisingly effective decision-making processes, challenging traditional notions of expertise.
About one hundred years ago, a scientist and statistician named Francis Galston came upon an opportunity to test how well regular people were at answering a question. He was at a fair where lots of people were guessing the weight of an ox, so he decided to take the average of all their guesses and compare it to the correct answer.
What he found shocked him. The average of their guesses was almost exactly accurate. The crowd was off by just one pound.
This eerie phenomenon—this idea that the crowd is right—drives everything from the stock market to the price of orange juice.
So, we decided to test it for ourselves. We asked Planet Money listeners to guess the weight of a cow.
This episode was hosted by David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein. It was produced by Nadia Wilson and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.