The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economics, societies and nations. by James Surowiecki

The Wisdom of Crowds has proven to be an interesting read with implications for many areas of society. Surowiecki, the author takes you on a journey through group cognition illustrating ways that groups of people can work independently to arrive at decisions that are better than what a group of experts can do working together. The book as been fascinating and has much to say for business and society. I believe that there are some interesting implications for education as well. Like Freakonomics and The Tipping Point, Surowiecki brings together studies in economics, history, sociology , psychology and cognitive sciences to tell a interesting story of how groups can produce what seems like wise decisions. The following is a sample story that is told in Wisdom of Crowds: Finding the Scorpion

In 1968, the submarine Scorpion disappeared in the North Atlantic. The vessel made a radio transmission and then just disappeared. After the navy had searched fruitlessly for months, a man named Craven assembled a diverse group of experts, from salvage, the Navy, mathematicians, and so on. He prepared a series of scenarios and had them bet on how likely the scenarios were. Using the group’s collective choice of scenario, he then ran a series of factors—speed, angle of descent, etc.—through a computer algorithm. This gave him a map of the Ocean floor with one spot that was most likely for the submarine. No one person had proposed this location and the Navy wasn’t looking there. But they found the Scorpion 220 yards from where the group said it would be. As a whole, the group knew all of the factors, but no individual had all the parts.

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