The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

Author:James Surowiecki

Surowiecki goes over types of crowd wisdom, types of crowd wisdom, and failures of crowd intelligence and how when certain factors combine, the wisdom of the crowd is much more accurate than the wisdom of individuals, even experts. One of the stories he uses to illustrate this is a study done in the 19th century by a British Anthropologist named Francis Galton. In the study he took an ox to a county fair and had people guess its weight. He also had cattle ranchers and farmer (experts) guess the weight. The general public as a whole did much better at guessing the weight than the so-called experts.