Format: PaperbackChange
Price:$9.84+ Free shipping with Amazon Prime
-
The Wisdom of Crowds
- ›
-
Customer reviews
- The Wisdom of Crowds
- ›
- Customer reviews
Top positive review
11 people found this helpful
4.0 out of 5 starsSmoothly written, valuable points, somewhat one-sided
ByMax Moreon March 25, 2005
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.
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.
Top critical review
2 people found this helpful
2.0 out of 5 starsThe Folly of Journalists
ByJohn C. Craveyon September 3, 2018
12 chapters, 80,000+ words, 22 pages of after notes
Surowiecki 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 “groupthink”.
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
Surowiecki 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 “groupthink”.
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
Search
Sort by
Most recent
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
ByJohn C. Craveyon September 3, 2018
12 chapters, 80,000+ words, 22 pages of after notes
Surowiecki 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 “groupthink”.
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
Surowiecki 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 “groupthink”.
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
2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful
Helpful
0Comment
Report abuse
ByCormacon March 1, 2018
Best book I’ve read
ByCarlos Torreson February 14, 2018
This book is very important, and it teaches individuals how to experiment the wisdom of the crowds through anecdotes, and it enlightens the reader to perceive the power of groups, and how groups are smarter than a single person. It teaches how look for better answers through group worshops.
ByDennison January 31, 2018
Excellent book!
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting, but WISDOM is more "common wisdom" than it was when this book was first published
In about 1958 a survey was taken among ordinary New Yorkers asking them where they'd go to meet other New Yorkers without any foreknowledge of place or time. The vast majority chose the information kiosk (as in NORTH BY NORTHWEST) at Grand Central Station, Friday afternoon, 5:00 p.m. Over forty years later the same question was asked, and the "winner" -- though no longer a majority -- indicated the TKTS booth at Times Square at noon on a Friday. This goes to show that common people are better at finding common solutions without consulting experts -- but also that "social consensus" may have broken down somewhat in the late 20th Century. This book was interesting enough, but its ideas have been passed through society so well that it may not be as necessary as it once was.
ByAlion October 7, 2017
Nice reading for ordinary people, politicians, academics, managers whom have direct reports. Some really good examples of cognition, coordination and cooperation problems.
ByDeiket Desseon October 6, 2017
Was a great read, highly understandable. The author conveys the topics in real world examples.
ByTony Brackson September 6, 2017
I thought that this book was great. Certainly kept me reading throughout. And some very useful insights into collective decision making, and how this should be best achieved.
ByDavidon September 3, 2017
I really wanted to find some deep insight in the book. Unfortunately, I could not find any.
I was also aggravated by the:
a) the writing style (perhaps OK for a magazine article but I judge wrong for a book that (it seems to me) is trying to 'teach')
b) the sloppy use of important words like 'Wisdom', 'fair', "value" etc.
c) The number of statements that were made and, it seems to me, implied to be true without any support (in the text) except by virtue of coming right after an interesting anecdote
d) The author and his editor(s) didn't notice* that he misses his own point
Some of the 2-star reviews here on Amazon are more interesting than the book itself..
*I am assuming that this book was not written as satire nor as a test to see if the reader is paying attention
I was also aggravated by the:
a) the writing style (perhaps OK for a magazine article but I judge wrong for a book that (it seems to me) is trying to 'teach')
b) the sloppy use of important words like 'Wisdom', 'fair', "value" etc.
c) The number of statements that were made and, it seems to me, implied to be true without any support (in the text) except by virtue of coming right after an interesting anecdote
d) The author and his editor(s) didn't notice* that he misses his own point
Some of the 2-star reviews here on Amazon are more interesting than the book itself..
*I am assuming that this book was not written as satire nor as a test to see if the reader is paying attention
There's a problem loading this menu right now.
Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime
Prime members enjoy FREE Two-Day Shipping and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books.
|
Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations
After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.
Back to top
Make Money with Us
Amazon Payment Products
- Conditions of Use
- Privacy Notice
- Interest-Based Ads
- © 1996-2018, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates
