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Yeah I only realised that you were interpreting it differently when I saw your reply to jimhefferon. If you do figure out what bothers you about the sweets==cro

• ska 13y ago
  Ok, I think the simple version of this is: You are basically constructing a situation where the dominant bias is the same for all of the measurements (e.g. pairs of students). So you have a problem with your method of sampling being biased in a predictable way. So far, so good and this is an interesting lesson. But they are all using the same estimation method from this biased information, and they are all (by construction) creating the same bias, and that is very much not crowd-like behavior. Applying this as an example of the problem with "wisdom of crowds" seems to really miss the point to me, because you created a situation where they didn't behave like a crowd.
  • mrow84 13y ago
    On further reflection, I have to concede that it is not a particularly good example of the wisdom of crowds idea. Whilst I still think you can interpret his experiment as showing something about how and why WoC can go wrong, essentially along the lines I previously argued, it is not obvious, and there is some subtlety in the interpretation. Your original phrasing "the "wisdom of crowds" part of the title is a bit unfortunate" seems most appropriate; indeed the word "crowd" doesn't appear in the rest of the piece.