The Wisdom of Crowds

by James Surowiecki

No cover — James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds (2004, Little, Brown)

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published June 3, 2004 by Little, Brown.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-86173-1

(13 reviews)

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant — better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

The story is told of the first observations of this effect, through to anecdotes of the effect in modern economics and psychology. The book not heavy on statistics, and has prompted much research since its publication.

The title is an allusion to the famous phrase, the "madness of crowds".

10 editions

Finserra reviewed The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Review of 'The Wisdom of Crowds' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Malcolm Gladwell meets John Kenneth Galbraith. This book is a great read. However, the last third is pure "decision markets", so read along carefully. Why do we need more shortsellers? What do kids guessing the number of marbles in a jar and farmers guessing the weight of a steer have in common with stock market pricing? Why does a diverse group of holiday sailors make a better estimate of the trajectory of a missing submarine than a slate of experts? How do crowds move the line in sports betting, and why are they uncannily correct?

otrops reviewed The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Review of 'The Wisdom of Crowds' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

While this book is full of interesting anecdotes and research, it feels a bit thrown together.

Some of the research seems to contradict his main thesis -- that groups of people are often smarter than the smartest individual among them. He seems to conclude that the only way to avoid traffic jams is to put people in smarter cars.

Equally as frustrating, one of the anecdotes he uses throughout the book -- the story of the Scorpion submarine being (nearly) located by the average of several experts' predictions -- seems to be a one-off. It is a non-repeatable experiment, yet he returns to this again and again.

Nevertheless, the book is worth reading for what he has to say about the best conditions for working in groups. The chapter on diversity is definitely worth reading.

It's also worth finishing the book. He addressed most of the questions I had towards …