Suroweicki's The Wisdom of Crowds

John Heywood once said, “Two minds are better than one”, and this just may be true when people need the best solution to a problem. In Suroweicki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds, he expresses a common belief that if a group is working towards a mutual goal, than their results will by far surpass those of a single individual. The Law of Averages helps determine a group’s ability to collaborate its ideas into a single outcome, which confirms how Surowiecki’s ideas that a larger group of people can provide many accurate predictions. Throughout his book, Surowiecki discusses how predictions and probability are some of the many key ingredients to achieving good results (10). Similarly, the Law of Averages states that groups will predict the correct outcome after a series of trial and error, which supports Surowiecki’s ideas. Even though working in a group might provide better solutions in some situations, many characteristics can hinder that group’s success. More importantly, in order for any group to come to collectively wise decisions, some knowledge is one of the necessary characteristics needed amongst its members.

Another key factor that has sometimes contributed to the success of a group’s answer would be the fact that they may sometimes rely on a single individual to guide the group in the right direction to achieve results (30). Overall, no matter how brilliant a single individual maybe, large groups of people actually turn out to be smarter than a select few. Therefore, groups are better at solving problems, developing opinions, making informed decisions, and predicting the outcome (22). Surowiecki believes crowds are smarter when they work as a team even if it may seem more realistic to work individually (XVII). Surowiecki goe...

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...an actually become. Along the same lines, the Law of Averages has also been successful because probability of information is what makes it work. In fact, we can use Surowiecki’s concepts and the Law of Averages in the same way by taking people’s opinions and then averaging them out to get the best answer possible. Overall, my discussions of Suroweicki’s concepts and the Law of Averages are in fact addressing the larger matter of how both of these ideas relate to how a group processes information to achieve a solution. Even more important, I think the truth behind the Law of Averages and the wisdom of crowds is that the best results come from lots of independent individual decisions.

Works Cited

Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Random House, 2004. Print

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Dir. Robert Greenwald. Brave New Theaters, 2005. DVD.