Expertise in Crowd Wisdom

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Francis Galton, a believer in experts, conducted an experiment at a country fair to test the wisdom of the crowd. Despite his initial skepticism, he found that by averaging everyone's guesses on the weight of an ox, the crowd's judgment was nearly perfect, being only one pound off from the actual weight. This highlights the phenomenon of crowd wisdom where collective judgment can be more accurate than individual experts.

This episode originally ran in 2015.

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.

Spoiler: You can see the results here.

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.

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