Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
The Wisdom of Crowds
and over 140,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Show more editions and formats
Show fewer editions and formatsBest Value
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott  (85)
$18.45
|
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson (177)
$16.47
|
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman  (60)
$16.47
|
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres  (70)
$16.50
|
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold (23)
$11.53
|
Editorial Reviews
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;
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;