The sublimity of togetherness

Here's one for the NCCPP - turns out the collective outperforms the individual. In terms of knowledge, at least.

One jar of jellybeans of unknown quantity, 24 intelligent EMBAers taking their best guess. Guesses ranged from 153 to 260, with an average of 191.5. The correct answer? 196 (bah, I underguessed by 2). The lesson? That a collective effort towards the solving of a problem synthesizes different ways of looking at the same issue - that is, everyone brings their own theory to the the table. This aggregation of knowledge tends to produce results that are more accurate than those done by individual "experts".

So I asked the question: could we have been influenced by the prior guesses of our classmates? After all, each guess was public and sequential. Sure enough, it's a risk that your data will be skewed if knowledge is NOT independent.

How to take advantage?

• Leverage web searching and the power of Google's ability to draw relationships through search engine optimization - this is harnessed not just through effective meta tags within your site, but also by having other sites link to yours.
  

• Use Google trends to measure the popularity and likelihood of outcomes through search activity. Or you could use the clearly much better named Alexa.com for the same purpose.

• Analysis of email flows can identify which individuals are communications gatekeepers.

Geez. There is so much we can do.

Note to self re: minute taking - we should have done the note taking from the Entropy meeting using Google docs and collaborated on the fly.