Introduction

Upon an experiment that was conducted in 1906 by Francis Gallon who was a young scientist in the annual West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. In this annual fair, the local people of the town commence to determine the value of one another’s sheep, horses, chickens, pigs and cattle. Gallon who was by all accounts highly fascinated by two things, “ the measurement of physical and mental qualities, and breeding”. (1) This exercise really shows how well the livestock has turned out due to breeding; this was of interest to Gallon because according to his beliefs, “only a few people had the characteristics necessary to keep societies healthy”. (1)

On this particular day their was a weight judging competition taking place, a large Ox was chosen and displayed, the Ox weighted 1,197 pounds and after the Ox was dressed and slaughtered it weighted about 1,197 pounds. As the crowd gathered to judge the Ox they had to fill out the name and their guess, 800 people tried in all, some were experts in the field of livestock and others were non-experts. At the end of the judging the crowd guess was considered to be perfect. Gallon later wrote, “ The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected. (2) Galton assumed that the guessed would prove to be incorrect, which was not the case, the science behind his experiment was proven wrong because there were different types of people that participated in the judging. People that ranged from dumb through smart. The point is that not all groups of people need to be intelligent in order to be considered smart; there was a collective decision at the end. “ This intelligence, or what I’ll call the “wisdom of the crowds,” is at work in the world in many different guises”. (4). This leads to the next section of how you can type in anything in Google and it finds the exact thing you want, this occurs in the stock market, the NFL and elections as well. This science can help companies become successful; it is almost intuitive to want people need.



“ One of the striking things about the wisdom of crowds is that even though its effects are all around us, it’s easy to miss, and even when it’s seen, it can be hard to accept.” (4) Sometimes we all tend to believe that it is the smart people that determined the outcome of elections, economy and the World Series. Collective intelligence can be applied to many problems or issues; it is about science and mathematics. For example, if you are the owner of a small business that sells toner for copier machines you have to figure out how much and how many toners you will sell in a quarter or year, it is cognitive skills but you also have to coordinate what problems may arise such as traffic lights, and people who commute by subway.

Cooperation is another factor because not everyone is trustworthy; this is challenging because people are not always honest when paying their taxes or collecting information on things like pollution. After 9/11 occurred the Environmental Protection Agency was done at the World Trade Center site to conduct air quality testing and they presented what was later determined to be false information about the quality of air that the residents and first responders were breathing in. Now there have been many illnesses such as cancer that these men and woman are suffering from and dying from all because of false information.

James Surowecki lays out examples where groups of people can become “crowds of wisdom” in almost every sector of society and business. When one starts to examine his theory and proves to almost become common sense because it does appear to be simple, he proves that there is a science to almost everything that we do. I found this a very interesting read because it never occurred to me that I was part of a bigger picture of decision-making community that was a science in how problems are solved.