Ladies and gents, here is a task for you: How can you find out the distance (in km) from here to the moon? No wikipedia allowed. What you can do is calling all your friends (who also are not allowed to look it up on the internet). One thing I can tell in advance: It’s possible to get this question answered even without being an astronomic crack or counting or thinking. And: You can get ALL answers to questions of this kind. All you need is a crowd (more than 100 people). You don’t believe it?
Here are three crazy true stories.
Story no 1: Vox ox
In 1906 Francis Galton (a cousin of the famous Charles Darwin) made a spectacular cognition. An english animal farm showed an ox and made an estimate competition. The visitors could fill out a card, and the winner with the best estimate was rewarded. Amateurs and experts tried. Galton then evaluated the 787 cards and came to the conclusion that the average of all estimates differed only a few pounds from the right weight of the ox. The average vote was a direct hit! Under the title Vox Populi (“Voice of the People”), the researchers published their findings in the science journal “Nature”.
Story no 2: Audience joker (Publikumsjoker)
If a candidate of the TV show “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” doesn’t know the answer, he can ask the 200 studio guest audience. The audience can choose between A, B, C and D. Statistics show that the answer is right in more than 90% of all cases.
Story no 3: The Quarks experiment
Ranga Yogeshwar presented an estimation experiment on his TV- broadcast “Quarks & Co”: TV viewers should guess the number of little balls in a vessel. 16.000 spectators had given their vote. The glass vessel contained exactly 5,780 balls, the average estimate of audience was 5,718! Only 75 people (that’s less than half a percent) estimated the accurate number. Ranga writes in his book: “There is a wonderful message behind it: It seems that every one of us plays an important role in the quest for the truth …”
This is why I love crowdfunding, crowdsourcing and asking my crowd by giving them 4 answers. The last time was when my publishing house “Hatje Cantz” has sent me a dividend payout from the book “Hartz IV Moebel.com” that I have released in 2012 with the help of 500 people from my facebook crowd. They wired over 3.500 Euro to me. I wasn’t sure, if I could just take that payout, because there were so many helpers contributing to that book project. So i simply made a quick survey on facebook. A) was take the money and found a family B) was share it with all 500 people, C) was invest in new good Karma projects and D) was: Make a big party for all.
My crowd decided in more than 60% for A). That was my favorite too.
Are you ready for a little crowd survey? So guess now quickly the distance to the moon! I estimated 50.000 km. Now ask another one around you and then add all three figures and then divide it in three. Here you find the right answer: http://www.astronews.com/frag/antworten/frage232.html
My crowd surveys showed me that I don’t have to fear the decision of the crowd, because they are always smarter than I can be. They said A, I did A: Take the money and found a family. And by the way: I have founded a family three months ago.