The Wisdom of Crowds

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The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki
from Anchor

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• Never judge a book by its cover!
  
  I have a confession to make. I started reviewing this book before reading it, based purely on the rather lengthy subtitle `Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations'. First, I planned to make a sneering reference to the dotcom bubble as evidence of this collective wisdom. Then, point to Charles Mackay's classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. How sad that this ignorant journalist had pinched the title... more info

• Excellent Primer
  There's a reason why democracy is the crappiest form of government, except all others (to paraphrase somebody famous).
  The theme of this book is that groups of people are smarter than individual people. It's sort of counterintuitive to the American spirit of individualism, but James Surowiecki does a creditable job of providing a good case to support his thesis in a very readable format. Anyone who regularly works in problem-solving groups will immediately recognize the fundamental truth of the... more info

• Groups of People are Smart!
  This author has done an outstanding job of proving his thesis that groups of people are smarter than the smartest person in the group. The book touches on markets, juries, and economics, and many more topics, furthering his main point. This book will persuade the reader that experts and loners do not make the best decisions, but groups of informed people do.

• The Wisdom of The Wisdom of Crowds
  This fascinating book it based on a simple, but counterintuitive premise--that a crowd of diverse people will almost always be smarter than any single expert. That is, take a group of people, some who may be educated, some who may be experts, and some who may be completely misinformed, and let them each independently solve a problem. Then, if you can take the average solution, it will be close to correct. Moreover, it will be closer than almost everyone else in the group. It's basically a bell-curve of... more info

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