Well, just for kicks, I went out and did my own experiment to see if could replicate his results. When I went out for a night on the town last Friday (8/08/08), I asked the people I talked to how much they thought I weighed. Here's what I looked like, so you can make a guess and tell how far off you would have been:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGHkpMC4eSYVRKGwdOHK9bepboQy2ZqQBFGbpoZqX_8_UFQe7SwEUHnsxZ3MPjZUVXiMpY4982qX4-4Fk1GumQyi-RBqltOHsyxmjq9ZN982LLi43jbZyHeRtqwqUbvoDo3D6Tj8rboG6Q/s400/Photo238.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj12Gb4ism6_u8j4Fvl9PNnL_5LnHui4HUVC9vxF9UMPbti7NnWT3F7OSYY90VEmEl-GctykdxXMsPFKqwoEq1c0qbhiTsoE_NuEvo_zTztHACUudfviFAQ_uEr8whS5SF3AGfNzfaBysB5/s400/Photo237.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit52B3XgOyDIt1ruCIjzjd-fNBQ2HTGZok-XCwGxofEtG866PVsHE4U8dL5axAB6YC1fU4V9J9O9klw0DQPUEMFfEScGEFNvhPJF1MyMoxS4hkmWU8GG784NUXEDA9O7olBArsd0x34TZG/s400/Photo236.jpg)
To help them make their best guess, I allowed them to see me without the blazer and from different angles, and to, ahem, touch me. To adhere to the protocols necessary to find wisdom in crowds, I made sure they didn't discuss guesses with each other until they submitted them, and that they made the guesses anonymously (by writing it town and putting it in a plastic bag out of my view). I excluded non-numerical entries such as "Fuck U".
The results? After collecting 16 entries at two venues, here is what I got (and this will be expressed in terms that conceal my weight and their guesses, which will be revealed in a later post):
The average (mean) of their guesses was off by 3.6%.
The average error (mean error) of all the guesses was 10.3%.
The median guess was off by 6.3%
This is pretty much consistent with the Wisdom of Crowds phenomenon: the average of the guesses was much more accurate than most of the individual guesses, and the median guess. It probably would have been even better if I had collected a bigger sample.
Pretty neat, huh?
3 comments:
That's a new one to meet people at the bar (and get them to touch you).
I don't trust crowds since going to Battery Park on July 4 one year, and everybody had set up their lawn chairs facing the wrong way to wait for the fireworks. It was a riot when they started going off behind us, and everyone who had gotten there 7 hours earlier for the front row realized their seats s*cked.
Serves them right for misleading 5,000 people.
Interesting stuff. You look nothing like I would have imagined from all that time on the War on Terror boards.
Very cool...I tried this with M&M's in my class, but they all talked with each other anyway. You should check out my book review: http://tinyurl.com/ykf73u6
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