Crowd wisdom (IMAGE)

Princeton University

Crowd wisdom

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Crowd wisdom tends to favor the most popular information, not necessarily the most correct. Mass ignorance can cancel out a knowledgeable minority with specialized information about a topic, resulting in the wrong answer becoming the most accepted. Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed what they call the 'surprisingly popular' algorithm. The technique hinges on asking people two things about a given question: What do they think the right answer is, and how popular do they think each answer will be? The correct answer is that which is more popular than people predict.

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(Image by Julia Kuhl, www.somedonkey.com)

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