The Wisdom of Crowds

[starfish1113]

Has anybody read this?

A colleague of mine let me borrow it based on the job that I do (he had no idea about my interest in BAM). Anyway, the very first chapter starts with the author's opinions on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book with me right now, but the gist of what he was saying is that a group can get to the "right" answer of something better than any individual member of that group or individual experts in that particular field. I'm three pages in, so he hasn't convinced me either way on that hypothesis, but his BAM comparison was suspect, to be kind.

He (or somebody) calculated the success rate of PAFs and ATAs. Apparently PAFs are successful around 60% of the time while ATAs are successful 91% of the time. While he admits that they aren't the same questions being answered, the one set of questions isn't appreciably more or less difficult than the other, so clearly group think is more desirable than individual input, even if that individual is hand picked as an expert in a particular field.

Is he crazy? Clearly, he hasn't watched the show near enough to know that ATA is used before PAF in the vast majority of cases. ATA works very well at 8K and below, but once you hit 25K, it's almost always a crapshoot. PAF is rarely used below that 8K marker. This guy really needs to do his homework. A better comparison (albeit one that wouldn't have very many instances) would be to compare how many times a contestant has used both ATA and PAF on the same question and see what the results are. Of course, if that happened, the ATA results would have to have been ambiguous enough to use a second lifeline, but still the conclusions drawn from that comparison would be much more valid than taking the entire process as a whole.

OK, that's our on-topic post of the day....

[MarleysGh0st]

I haven't read the book, but I've read this anecdote in countless articles. As you noticed, it's flawed because of its apples and oranges comparison.

Besides that, they try to take this beyond the scope of WWTBAM to say that a crowd consensus is better than a single expert opinion. As we all know, the PAF lifeline doesn't allow one to pick an expert for given question; one must choose from a previously prepared list of five friends (willing to stand by during those long taping windows) who may or may not have any familiarity with the subject they're called to help on.

Throw away The Wisdom of Crowds and stick with Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

[etaoin22]

Hmm. I didn't know that the analysis in this book was that superficial.

I do know that there is a notion, perhaps the author's preconceived notion, that one can detect the wisdom of crowds in eveyday life, and then connect that to the Wisdom of the Marketplace, which is understood as perhaps even being Perfect Wisdom, and is comprehended by Economists but not by us ordinary people.

Now, I haven't actually read the book of course, but I do got that notion.

On the other hand, what I do know is that the title is, in part, a reference to the book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds",written over a century ago by Charles Mackay. I have read that one; it has a fine analysis of crowd behaviour, and, of course, an extraordinary title.

Read that one first, is my rec.

[etaoin22]

Marley types faster than I do.

[starfish1113]

Hmm. I didn't know that the analysis in this book was that superficial.

I do know that there is a notion, perhaps the author's preconceived notion, that one can detect the wisdom of crowds in eveyday life, and then connect that to the Wisdom of the Marketplace, which is understood as perhaps even being Perfect Wisdom, and is comprehended by Economists but not by us ordinary people.

Now, I haven't actually read the book of course, but I do got that notion.

On the other hand, what I do know is that the title is, in part, a reference to the book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds",written over a century ago by Charles Mackay. I have read that one; it has a fine analysis of crowd behaviour, and, of course, an extraordinary title.

Read that one first, is my rec.

I've only gotten through the Introduction and five page of Chapter One so far, so I'm not intimating that the analysis is superficial at all. It's just that the first example he gave in Chapter 1 was simply wrong, IMO. The example he gave in his intro was pretty cool, though.

He mentions that the name of his book is an homage of sort to that first book, so maybe I'll pick that up at some point.

[etaoin22]

I've only gotten through the Introduction and five page of Chapter One so far, so I'm not intimating that the analysis is superficial at all. It's just that the first example he gave in Chapter 1 was simply wrong, IMO. The example he gave in his intro was pretty cool, though.

He mentions that the name of his book is an homage of sort to that first book, so maybe I'll pick that up at some point.

If the author screws up for the first five pages , how can one trust anything else?

[MarleysGh0st]

He mentions that the name of his book is an homage of sort to that first book, so maybe I'll pick that up at some point.

Andrew Tobias has some chapters from that one available on his web site: http://www.andrewtobias.com/ExPopDel-1.html

If you want to read beyond the economic manias to discussions of witch hunts and other topics, you'll need a hardcopy.

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

Ya want the wisdom of crowds, just post some question on this board and eventually the right answer gets back to you.