Strong Disunity
How do we get the most out of groups? Tap their collective wisdom? Soft-voiced consensus or robust disagreement? How do we avoid the reverse synergy in groups, when they are dumber than their members, instead of smarter?
Here are some findings of a book and a newpaper editorial ("The Wisdom of Crowds,” and David Brooks' "A House Divided, and Strong" recently in the NYT - see citations at the bottom of this.)
A sampling:
“How much would this ox weigh, net, once slaughtered and dressed for sale?” That was the contest at the 1906 West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. 800 farmers, butchers, shopkeepers, and people of all sorts looked at the live ox standing in the ring, made their mental calculations, and placed their sixpence wager.
The mean of the guesses was 1,197 pounds. After slaughter and dressing, the “ox” weighed 1,198 pounds. None of the individual guesses – even those made by the butchers – came that close. The opinions of this diverse, decentralized group of independently minded people acting alone, when properly aggregated by the wager, made a virtually perfect decision.
Apparently a torpedo exploded in the United States Navy submarine Scorpion, and it sank before it could send a distress call in May, 1968. Submarines stay incommunicado much of the time, so no one knew where it was resting on the bottom, other than somewhere on the floor of the Atlantic. The Navy’s four top submarine experts could not find it. Then one officer, John Craven, took a different approach. He assembled a much larger group of mathematicians, salvage experts, submarine officers, navigators, and others…gave them the known facts about Scorpion’s sinking, and asked them to estimate where it was WITHOUT consulting with each other at all. Then he averaged the opinions of this diverse, decentralized group of independently minded people acting alone. Scorpion’s wreck was found 220 yards from the spot of the averaged estimates. But no one estimate of any of the experts was anywhere near that close.
When stumped, contestants on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” can have two of the four possible answers removed, or ask a highly-knowledgeable friend or relative, or poll the audience whose responses are then gathered and averaged by computer.
Over time, option two – the “expert” friend – was right 65 percent of the time. But polling and aggregating the diverse, completely independent audience of (presumably) “ordinary” people yielded the right answer 91 percent of the time.
The point: Good groups (diverse, independent, and well aggregated) are most often smarter – and make better decisions over time – than the smartest individuals in them, when asked to decide ascertainable outcomes. “The best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus and compromise.”
New York Times writer David Brooks, surveying an entirely different subject, recently concluded that the reasons for the current wave of Republican Party success had nothing to so with some kind of conformity. "...Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly...In disunity there is strength."
For James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=Wisdom%20of%20crowds&userid=vi5oAJ6BLM&cds2Pid=946
For David Brooks' "A House Divided, and Strong"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05brooks.html
Here are some findings of a book and a newpaper editorial ("The Wisdom of Crowds,” and David Brooks' "A House Divided, and Strong" recently in the NYT - see citations at the bottom of this.)
A sampling:
“How much would this ox weigh, net, once slaughtered and dressed for sale?” That was the contest at the 1906 West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. 800 farmers, butchers, shopkeepers, and people of all sorts looked at the live ox standing in the ring, made their mental calculations, and placed their sixpence wager.
The mean of the guesses was 1,197 pounds. After slaughter and dressing, the “ox” weighed 1,198 pounds. None of the individual guesses – even those made by the butchers – came that close. The opinions of this diverse, decentralized group of independently minded people acting alone, when properly aggregated by the wager, made a virtually perfect decision.
Apparently a torpedo exploded in the United States Navy submarine Scorpion, and it sank before it could send a distress call in May, 1968. Submarines stay incommunicado much of the time, so no one knew where it was resting on the bottom, other than somewhere on the floor of the Atlantic. The Navy’s four top submarine experts could not find it. Then one officer, John Craven, took a different approach. He assembled a much larger group of mathematicians, salvage experts, submarine officers, navigators, and others…gave them the known facts about Scorpion’s sinking, and asked them to estimate where it was WITHOUT consulting with each other at all. Then he averaged the opinions of this diverse, decentralized group of independently minded people acting alone. Scorpion’s wreck was found 220 yards from the spot of the averaged estimates. But no one estimate of any of the experts was anywhere near that close.
When stumped, contestants on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” can have two of the four possible answers removed, or ask a highly-knowledgeable friend or relative, or poll the audience whose responses are then gathered and averaged by computer.
Over time, option two – the “expert” friend – was right 65 percent of the time. But polling and aggregating the diverse, completely independent audience of (presumably) “ordinary” people yielded the right answer 91 percent of the time.
The point: Good groups (diverse, independent, and well aggregated) are most often smarter – and make better decisions over time – than the smartest individuals in them, when asked to decide ascertainable outcomes. “The best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus and compromise.”
New York Times writer David Brooks, surveying an entirely different subject, recently concluded that the reasons for the current wave of Republican Party success had nothing to so with some kind of conformity. "...Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly...In disunity there is strength."
For James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=Wisdom%20of%20crowds&userid=vi5oAJ6BLM&cds2Pid=946
For David Brooks' "A House Divided, and Strong"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05brooks.html
posted by John Barry at 4/09/2005 10:17:00 AM
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