Shocking Accuracy Of The Guessing Crowd!

Amazingly precise predictions can be proven with a simplistic and fun experiment called the wisdom of crowds. Apparently, this idea was first put forward by the Greeks and may even go back further into the misty days of yore. In fact, we may already know the exact date of its beginning, but dont know that we know that, yet!? Read on to remember how...

So What Is It Then?

Well, the basic idea is that; a crowd of people making wild guesses, can be far more accurate than a single individual expert. This calls into question the notion of having an individual or 'select few' as leaders, apparently knowing what the right decisions are for the many!?

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OK Gimme An Example!

An instance of this could be; say we have a load of fresh minnows and they want to know the total amount of Ferraris all the whales are driving. So all we do is; add the total amount of Ferraris guessed at, then take an average of the total guesses, and the answer will turn out to be accurate to only 0.1% from the actual answer. Impressive, aren't we.

C'mon you have to hand to us, because as a group we seem to know, whereas individually, we don't! Don't we? And paradoxically, the accuracy of the group relies on the extremes of the seemingly erroneous or wild guesses. So the appearance, at first, of 'errors' are essential! The whole notion of 'perfection' or as near perfect as we can get, must include the imperfect. It's formula is inclusive not exclusive.

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Who's This? And Does He Own A Ferrari?

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The very thoughtful and worried looking gentleman in the above picture is Francis Galton, who didn't own a Ferrari but does love Steem. Bless. Anyway, apart from being a eugenicist (amongst many other things) he enjoyed collecting tickets from his local summer fayre.

The tickets were entries into a 'guess the weight' of an ox competition. It turns out, as the story goes, using the above formula, not one person got the correct answer. But the interesting thing was; the group average of guesses, was only a fraction away from the exact weight of the ox!

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What's This Got To Do With Steemit?

It appears to have everything to do with Steemit, in that; as long as we are all coming from different: locations, cultures, values, age groups, emotions, beliefs, experiences, tastes and opinions etc., then, as a diverse group, we will collectively share and accurately expand into an ever growing potential which is greater than ourselves as individuals.

You see, it's our differences that really makes the difference as a collective, and all the wonderful ideas are equally reliant on the 'so called' terrible and erroneous ideas. How would we know what is a great idea unless there was a comparatively bad idea? One cannot exist without the apparent other, and in this context the comparative creates a more efficient and inclusive whole.

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But why stop there...because there will be nothing you can do to let this effortlessly permeate through into your life in ways you never imagined could be possible until right now, this instant. The truth is: we are already using/doing this naturally, and have just remembered that we forgot that.

All the best,

Phi23