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The Wisdom of Crowds

By James Surowiecki

(80)

| Paperback | 9780385721707

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Critics

The jellybean democracy

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki 295pp, Little, Brown, £16.99 Who wants to be average? To be average is to be commonplace and unexceptional. It conjures up the mediocre or banal - the consensus, the mass, the run of the mill. But here's the r ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

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Riccardo Mariani said on Nov 29, 2011 | Add your feedback

An easy-to-read and though-provoking book about collective intelligent. It stresses, provided the crowd is independent and diversified, that the crowd can deduce better decision than the average individual.
The concept is similar to the one proposed in another book, The Starfish and the Spider. ... (continue)

An easy-to-read and though-provoking book about collective intelligent. It stresses, provided the crowd is independent and diversified, that the crowd can deduce better decision than the average individual.
The concept is similar to the one proposed in another book, The Starfish and the Spider. The catch is that when there are too many people buying the same argument/decision, it creates the social interdependence that breaks the accuarcy of this theory.
Why? One reason is the so called social proof. When the number of people in the bandwagon increase, the more general public it will attract, the less diverisified the group may become. Another point is called Infotmation Cascade. A few first-tryer may influence the public to a good or bad bandwagon. This is similar to the epidemics as mentioned in Tipping Point (mavens, connectors, salemen). Sometimes imatation is good, only if poeple do not follow mindlessly.
To have a good balance, there ought to be an effective means for individual contribution be made known at the global level. Or else the crowd are not aware of it and cannot collectively decide whether it is good or not.
Comparatively, the first half of the book on the basic advocation of crowd intelligent is more interesting than the second half on case study. Despite of this, this book gives fair perspective on different sides of the coins. It worths the time.

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Waleswong said on Nov 10, 2010 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Section 3[return]Society

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Jonaschau said on Jul 18, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

I or the Book ran out of steam

I enjoyed the book but ran out of steam a little during the later chapters about democracy and financial markets.
I did however, have many sparks of recognition when he was talking about the dynamics of meetings and how small groups emphasize consensus over dissent, leading to group think and ... (continue)

I enjoyed the book but ran out of steam a little during the later chapters about democracy and financial markets.
I did however, have many sparks of recognition when he was talking about the dynamics of meetings and how small groups emphasize consensus over dissent, leading to group think and poor decisions.

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Mearso said on Jul 15, 2008 | Add your feedback

A case for open dialog

My main take-away is that engaging different opinion for certain problems / questions will help arrive at the optimal solution.

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Ray Tseng said on Sep 2, 2007 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback