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The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki
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$15.00 |
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$4.80 (32%) |
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Paperback
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN13: 9780385721707
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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.
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| A subject to keep in mind |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Surowiecki brings to the forefront an amazing collection of anecdotes and facts that support his main thesis: crowds 'can' be wise, useful and if carefully crafted, their participation can be spectacularly beneficial.
I've never given much thought about 'diversity,' a term that to me meant a way to give away with discrimination. Surowiecky proves that diversity is one of the necessary ingredients to benefit from a crowd.
I would blankly recommend this book to everyone. To some it may mean a way to apply this knowledge, to others, an understanding of how crowds work (and when they don't) is just intellectually stimulant.
I realize this may sound like an advertisement. I have no disclaimers to make, I have no specific interest or relationship with the author, I just was blown away with the concept.
This is a book I will treasure and re-read again.
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| Does nothing but point out the obvious |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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The Wisdom of Crowds is nothing more than collection of statistical truisms which Surowiecki attempts to explain as some sort of mystical force at work. If you have even the slightest background in statistics, you will find each of his examples of "group intelligence" frustrating and perhaps insulting.
He is right - Any poll for which there is a right anwer, a random group of individuals does seem likely to choose the correct answer by popular vote. This is true even when, individually most of the individuals get it wrong. But is this evidence that groups are smarter than individuals?
To highlight the flawed logic found this book, I'll provide an example in terms of a magic trick:
Suppose I have a deck of cards and place the four aces face down on a table. I then ask a group of 100 people to tell me, by popular vote, which card is the ace of spades. Lets say beforehand, I told just 10 of the people which card was correct and the other 90 guessed at random. Without a doubt, the group would pick the right card almot every time even though 90 percent of the group had no idea. The author would have you believe that this is some sort of mystical group intelligence, or that humans are wired to be smarter in groups.
Unfortunately, there is a much simpler answer: probability. The 10 people who knew the right answer skew the vote making it probable that the group will guess correctly. As I increase the number of people who know the right cardr, the group has a better and better chance of getting it right. This doesnt mean groups are smarter than individuals. In fact, it suggests that a relatively small number of knowledgable people can control the direction of much larger groups.
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| Reinforced my Faith in the Group Process |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Being a huge proponent of teams, I felt compelled to pick up James Surowiecki's book at my local bookstore. I'm also a big fan of his contributions to the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. And then a few of my buddies suggested the book. I call this "triangulation," when three completely different events collide. For me, it's like a huge, neon, pulsating arrow saying "read me!"
In a nutshell, this book reinforced my faith in large groups. Surowiecki's premise is this: "Large groups of people are smarter than the elite few, no matter how brilliant - better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. The intertaining vignettes (similar to Malcolm Gladwell's style in The Tipping Point and Blink, two other wonderful books on collective and individual decision making), Surowiecki describes the conditions for group wisdom (diversity, independence and decentralization) and examples that support his premise. His stories range from popular culture, psychology, biology, economics, artificial intelligence, military history, political theory - a veritable potpourri of instances where the wisdom of crowds flourish as well as flounder. Makes you think a bit differently about all kinds of things including why I have "bad line karma" where the line I am standing in is always the longest.
For over a decade, I have taught others to "trust the team." Now I know why...as well as the three conditions for group wisdom - another version of triangulation. I also have a myriad of everyday examples of how the many are smarter than the few. Now that can restore anyone's faith in group process!
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| Bad Implications.... |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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The last thing America needs right now is a mindset that supports the 'crowd' to make our minds up for us. How did that work in 2008-9 stock market crash and housing bubble? In Surowiecki's view, the crowds are right, and we should believe them over any 'bright guy' with a great idea.
The Swedes have a word for this - 'lagom', which means 'good enough'. The U.S. economy wasn't built upon 'lagom', it was built upon 'can-do', which arose from brilliant ideas.......from individuals!!! Crowd thinking may get an accurate answer, as he supports, but that's only 'lagom'.
Interesting read, but concepts to support his case are cherry picked, and contorted away from logical thinking and observation of how crowds really work.
The Death of Management: Restoring Value to the U.S. Economy
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| Are all of us really smarter than any of us? Could be. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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What do the search for a lost submarine, the behavior of the stock market on the day a space shuttle exploded, and the results of a Google search have in common? According to James Surowiecki, they are all dependent on the input of many people, massaged into a single decision that is far more accurate, and regularly so, than the decisions of any of the individuals who participated in those decisions. On the day of the Challenger disaster in 1986, the stocks of many NASA parts suppliers dipped. Within a few hours, all recovered, except for the stock of Morton Thiokol, the manufacturer of the O-rings linked many weeks later to the explosion. But how did stockholders "know" that Thiokol was culpable? Surowiecki explains how the individual decisions of many stock holders combined--with some cancelling out and others reinforcing each other--until a result emerged that no single stockholder could have predicted.
Using simple games and puzzles, Surowiecki tells us how social scientists study human systems that sometimes work against an individual's self-interest. For instance, how many of us even think to challenge the first-come first-served convention of being seated on subways and movie theaters? Why do we tip at restaurants that we know we will never visit again? Why do people generally pay their taxes rather than cheat, and what could change that behavior? Why do people irrationally spend money (or time or emotions) on punishing those who do not follow the rules?
Surowiecki also explains how the wisdom of crowds can fail us. Talkative people, or instance, are often seen as experts when they are no such thing. And the order in which one speaks in a group can unconsciously bias the group for or against a viewpoint, regardless of the merits of the viewpoint. Group wisdom can be thwarted if the groups is homogeneous or when individual decisions are dependent on each other. The smartest groups are diverse--with individuals possessing bits of information not available to others--and independent--allowing the random errors of individuals to cancel out rather than to line up. Take away one or both of these conditions and groups become stupid. In the Challenger example above, it was the fact that thousands of stockholders could decide independently about which stocks to buy that led to the right call on Morton Thiokol. It was also necessary that a mechanism, the stock market, was in place to aggregate those individual decisions.
"The Wisdom of Crowds" is a must-read for those seeking to improve decision-making in any corporate environment here many people participate--schools, churches, offices and governments. The book points not to a mysterious "power of the hive" that is beyond the ability of individuals to understand, but to the sum of day-to-day human interactions that can be tapped to make our lives easier and more manageable, or thwarted to make them miserable.
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