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Spring 2006 Physics Seminar Series
Seminars are held on Fridays at 3:00 pm in McCook Auditorium; Refreshments start at 2:45
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Are Crowds Wise? An Experimental Test |
M. Silverman
Dept. of Physics, Trinity College
image: Beckman Archives
A recent best-selling book argues for the provocative idea that "...groups of (ordinary) people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant", with respect to such matters as prediction, problem solving, decision making, and other cognitive activities. If valid, the implications for how best to make wise economic, political, educational, judicial, scientific, technological, and military choices (to state a few possibilities) are far reaching. In this seminar I discuss a classroom experiment to examine the validity of the contention within a statistically significant group of physics students and whether the proposition of collective intelligence can be regarded as a "mathematical truism", as claimed.
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Fri. April 7th, McCook Auditorium, 3:00 pm, Refreshments 2:45 pm | |
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