Free Ebook The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki
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The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki
Free Ebook The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki
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From Publishers Weekly
While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge. Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Review
“As entertaining and thought-provoking as The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.... The Wisdom of Crowds ranges far and wide.” –The Boston Globe“A fun, intriguing read–and a concept with enormous potential for CEOs and politicos alike.” –Newsweek“This book is not just revolutionary but essential reading for everyone.”–Christian Science Monitor“Provocative....Musters ample proof that the payoff from heeding collective intelligence is greater than many of us imagine.” –BusinessWeek“There’s no danger of dumbing down for the masses who read this singular book.” –Entertainment Weekly“Clearly and persuasively written.” –Newsday“Convincingly argues that under the right circumstances, it’s the crowd that’s wiser than even society’s smartest individuals. New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki enlivens his argument with dozens of illuminating anecdotes and case studies from business, social psychology, sports and everyday life.” –Entertainment Weekly“The author has a knack for translating the most algebraic of research papers into bright expository prose.” –The New York Times Book Review"Dazzling . . . one of those books that will turn your world upside down. It's an adventure story, a manifesto, and the most brilliant book on business, society, and everyday life that I've read in years." –Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point “Surowiecki’s clear writing and well-chosen examples render complicated mathematical and sociological theories easy to grasp. . . . [His] accounts of how the wisdom of crowds has formed the world we live in will thrill trivia mavens–and may make a better investor (or football coach) out of anyone who takes its conclusions to heart.” –Time Out New York"This book should be in every thinking businessperson's library. Without exception." –Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do With My Life? “Drawing from biology, behavioral economics, and computer science, Surowiecki offers answers to such timeless–and often rhetorical–questions as “Why does the line you’re standing in always seem to move the slowest?” and “Why is there so much garbage on TV?” The result is a highly original set of conclusions about how our world works.” –Seed Magazine“As readers of Surowiecki’s writings in The New Yorker will know, he has a rare gift for combining rigorous thought with entertaining example. [The Wisdom of Crowds] is packed with amusing ideas that leave the reader feeling better-educated.” –Financial Times (London)“The book is deeply researched and well-written, and the result is a fascinating read.” –Deseret Morning News"Jim Surowiecki has done the near impossible. He's taken what in other hands would be a dense and difficult subject and given us a book that is engaging, surprising, and utterly persuasive. The Wisdom of Crowds will change the way you think about markets, economics, and a large swatch of everyday life." –Joe Nocera, editorial director of Fortune magazine and author of A Piece of the Action “Makes a compelling case.” –The Gazette (Montreal)“Deftly compressing a small library’s worth of research into a single slim and readable volume, the Financial Page columnist at The New Yorker makes his bid to capture the zeitgeist as his colleague Malcolm Gladwell did with The Tipping Point. . . . The author has produced something surprising and new: a sociological tract as gripping as a good novel.” –Best Life“Surowiecki is a patient and vivid writer with a knack for telling examples.” –Denver Post "Most crowds of readers would agree that Jim Surowiecki is one of the most interesting journalists working today. Now he has written a book that will exceed even their expectations. Anyone open to re-thinking their most basic assumptions–people who enjoyed The Tipping Point, say–will love this book." –Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball “Surowiecki’s is a big-idea book.” –Salon.com"It has become increasingly recognized that the average opinions of groups is frequently more accurate than most individuals in the group. The author has written a most interesting survey of the many studies in this area and discussed the limits as well as the achievements of self-organization." –Kenneth Arrow, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and Professor of Economics (Emeritus), Stanford University“Clever and surprising.... The originality and sheer number of demonstrations of the impressive power of collective thinking provided here are fascinating, and oddly comforting.” –Bookforum“An illuminating book.” –Detroit Free Press
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Product details
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (August 16, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385721706
ISBN-13: 978-0385721707
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.7 x 7.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.1 out of 5 stars
299 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#62,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
12 chapters, 80,000+ words, 22 pages of after notesSurowiecki writes good thumbnails about interesting subjects like the discovery of the U.S. submarine Scorpion, bee dance, how radio was first financed, basic rules of starling flock formation and Newsfutures.com.He also brings up an odd phenomenon: The averages of multiple guesses is usually better than the best individual guess. Because no explanation is offered, it retains the status of miracle throughout the book. In another context he offers an interesting speculation: teams of government and corporate experts are often afflicted with “groupthinkâ€.The rest of the book is about crowds. Two of his criteria that constitute a crowd are independence and diversity. That sounds more like a group of well-informed independent thinkers, not a crowd as we commonly understand it. THE WISDOM OF WELL-INFORMED INDEPENDENT THINKERS is probably a harder title to sell.Surowiecki isn’t even a man of the people. Read page 233 for his endorsement of a paternalistic automatic retirement plan.But none of this keeps Surowiecki from pushing the idea of crowd wisdom. It’s an uphill struggle because most of the examples he provides are expert-heavy and in the case of the stock market, it’s impossible to measure either independence or diversity.Most of his examples involve numerical guesses. Crowd wisdom means that the crowd is a kind of social Ouija board. But what if you need, say, a mathematical formula? But even if you only need number-guessers, what good is a crowd? Businesses and government research get ahead by keeping secrets. How am I going to keep the guesses of 100,000 people secret?Most of the second half is about business. Here are two things to know about that. The first is that no university economic experiment can measure anything worthwhile because millions of real dollars aren’t at risk. The second is that if Surowiecki’s syndicalist ideas worked better than capitalist ideas, they would have taken the world by storm in the 19th century when they were introduced.And if business forecasting is a kind of wisdom, there’s an expert who always beats the crowd. His name is Warren Buffett.2 stars
Crowds have a bad rap. Our opinion of collective decision making and behavior has been darkened by first-hand observation of events such as the stock market bubble and crash, and by classic works such as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. That is unfortunate, argues James Surowiecki because, under the right circumstances, groups "are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."If nothing else, The Wisdom of Crowds should entertain you. It may not do much more than this if you are already well read in economics, complexity theory, decision analysis, organizational theory, social psychology, prospect theory and other fields. Few readers will have delved into all the relevant areas to any great extent, so most can expect to learn something new, interesting, and quite possibly useful. Surowiecki's wide-ranging gathering of sources to support his argument is a virtue, yet it's also something of a problem. The difficulty of knowing much about all the areas on which he draws makes it easy for him to pick and choose studies and arguments selectively. While many of his points are well made, the way he supports his case sometimes seems one-sided.In evaluating and supporting the idea of the wisdom of crowds, Surowiecki looks at how collective intelligence can be applied to three kinds of problems: Cognition problems (which have definitive solutions), coordination problems, and cooperation problems (which require self-interested agents to work together). The first half of the book sets out the theory, thoroughly and entertainingly illustrated by examples. These include the smarts of the audience on game shows, how to design an excellent search engine, why short selling is a good thing, and how a group finds a lost submarine. The second half of the book applies the ideas to show various ways in which people organize toward common goals in cases such as traffic, science, juries, committees, business organizations, markets, and democracies.Among the main points that may be useful to executives, Surowiecki emphasizes that for the crowd to be wise, it must be characterized by diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, and a specific kind of decentralization, and there needs to be a good method for aggregating opinions. He stresses that the best collective decisions result from disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.While corporations often rely on experts, the book does well at challenging our confidence in expertise as compared to the average of the crowd. In the course of a discussion of the role of independence, we learn that to improve your organization's decision making you should ensure that decisions are made simultaneously rather than one after the other. Finally, I have to second Surowiecki's puzzlement at the apparent lack of interest by companies in using markets (such as decision markets) for corporate strategy and market research.
Suroweiki engrossed me from the beginning. Though this book appears to be a collection of anecdotes about how crowds often outthink the experts, it struck me as a blueprint for how decision-makers should harness the power of people. Thus it is a treatise on smart business and marketing, good government, and sound organization management.As a U.S. Army veteran, the author propelled me to thoughts on how the military could use its people's collective wisdom, something on which I have written extensively:Nine Weeks: a teacher's education in Army Basic TrainingAmong the most relevant claims from the book is this cogent bit of logic:"To state the obvious, unless people know what the truth is, it's unlikely they'll make the right decisions. This means being honest about performance. It means being honest about what's not happening. It means being honest about expectations. Unfortunately, there's little evidence that this kind of sharing takes place....One of the things that gets in the way of the exchange of real information is the deep-rooted hostility on the part of bosses to opposition from subordinates. This is the real cost of a top-down approach to decision making: it confers the illusion of perfectability upon the decision makers and encourages everyone else simply to play along. What makes this especially damaging is that people in an organization already have a natural inclination to avoid conflict and potential trouble. It's remarkable, in fact, that in an autocratic organization good information ever surfaces.It's a book that anyone who has been around people should read.
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