#crowd wisdom

I am actually in desperate need of a nice leather tote, so if anyone has any recommendations, hit me up! I am hoping to find something tall, relatively structured but soft leather, no big logos please!

I'm terms of other bags, I actually am not a great source here. Most of my bags are vintage (non-designer). But I will say, Wolf and Badger is a great source for off the beaten track bags (and clothes and jewelry) generally!

Crowdsourcing is a very powerful concept and has become amplified through the growth of social media. There are 4 main branches to crowdsourcing:

1. Crowd creation

2. Crowd voting

3. Crowd funding

4. Crowd wisdom

In this post I’m focusing specifically on crowd wisdom as I am particularly fascinated by the concept. Jan Lorenz describes the concept nicely, that “the aggregate of many people’s estimates tend to be closer to the true value than all of the separate individual or even expert guesses” (Lorenz. J, 2011).

After watching Lior Zoref’s fascinating Ted Talk on crowdsourcing, specifically the TedOX he brought on stage to prove the experiment of crowd wisdom, I was inspired. I just had to test out the theory of crowd wisdom with my own cricles on different social media platforms because the theory seemed almost too good to be true.

So I took to my many social media platforms with a simple and age old question: how many almonds (ok maybe almonds aren’t so ‘age old’) are in the jar?

How many do you think are in the jar?

With posts on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Twitch, and email, I found and pestered anyone I could find to share their guesses and share the post with their own friends, creating a decentralised network throughout the internet.

After just 48 hours, I managed to receive over 100 guesses. Incredible! Also a little scary to see how many people I interact with online every day.

The results ranged between a measly 58 almonds to over 860 almonds. When I averaged out all of these, the total average came out to be 340 almonds. The correct number was actually 379 so the error margin was just 39 almonds below which is just incredible. 

Although the error margin of my experiment was higher than Lior Zoref’s amazing 3kg off the actual weight of the Ox, I was still unbelievably happy with the results. I can assume that the reason my error margin was higher was because my pool size was smaller. In Lior’s experiment, he had over 500 answers, so it’s assumed that if I were to receive more answers to add to my average, I my error margin would slowly shrink smaller and smaller.

After doing this experiment, it’s clear that crowd wisdom is definitely possible and true to the basic theory. The power that a crowd has over an individual is very powerful and could be used in many instances for the good.

Really the only downfall to this experiment was the copious amounts of almonds I ate.

Until next week!

What Does the Future Hold for Augur’s Prediction Market?

Following great delays and great fanfare, Augur’s decentralized prediction market has launched. One week on, an examination of the sort of wagers it’s attracted shows the ways in which the Ethereum-based project can be harnessed as well as the potential hazards. How decentralized is Augur and, if push came to shove, could the platform prove that it is truly censorship resistant? The fate of…

Hive Mind: New Approach Could Improve on Crowd Wisdom

https://www.articleblotter.com/hive-mind-new-approach-could-improve-on-crowd-wisdom/

The most frequently quoted example of the crowd wisdom phenomenon comes from a 1987 study in which researchers asked 56 students to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar. The average of the guesses (871) was closer to the true …

Agenda

Welcome: Settle in with some coffee & something to eat (15 minutes)

Pitch Feedback Loop: We go around the room & everyone has 60 seconds to pitch what they’re working on, interested in learning more about, or, who they’d like to connect with. We follow each Pitch with some crowdsourced feedback (45 minutes)

Presentation: Stephane Galzin, co-founder of go-tune-in, as he shares his “Tips on How Workflow Analytics Empower Repair Shops to Cut Costs”. (30 minutes)

Announcements & Networking: Analog socializing as in human-to-human interaction. (30 minutes)

Helping Us Make It Happen

Venue

Volunteers

Volunteer: James Bridger, gameofbands.com Organizer & Chair: Steven Milstein, Collab.Ventures

Pics

(random order)

We’re Investing in Really Early Stage Startups!

Thanks to the Breakfast Club of Canada, close to 130,000 students have access to a nutritious breakfast each morning in 1,266 schools across Canada.

StartupBreakfastClub.com is proud to donate a portion of its proceeds to the Breakfast Club of Canada. Upon registration, attendees will have the opportunity to add to our support for these really early stage startups! :-)

Welcome: Settle in with some coffee & something to eat (15 minutes)

Pitch Feedback Loop: We go around the room & everyone has 60 seconds to pitch what they’re working on, interested in learning more about, or, who they’d like to connect with. We follow each Pitch with some crowdsourced feedback (45 minutes)

Presentation: Charles Kharouf, founder of Devcostrat, will be sharing his innovative way for you to save time & energy the next time you’re the market for a mortgage, by getting your next mortgage to shop for you instead of you shopping for it! (30 minutes)

Announcements & Networking: Analog socializing as in human-to-human interaction. (30 minutes)

Helping Us Make It Happen

Venue

Volunteers

Volunteer: Juan Cabrera, SparkFounders.com Volunteer: Maxence Roy Organizer & Chair: Steven Milstein, Collab.Ventures

Pics

(random order)

https://twitter.com/ramisayar/status/585433758242832384

Community Announcements

It’s a happy hour ever two weeks at APT200 on St-Laurent from 5 to 7. The more the merrier and the next one is on the 16th :)

We’re Investing in Really Early Stage Startups!

Thanks to the Breakfast Club of Canada, close to 130,000 students have access to a nutritious breakfast each morning in 1,266 schools across Canada.

StartupBreakfastClub.com is proud to donate a portion of its proceeds to the Breakfast Club of Canada. Upon registration, attendees will have the opportunity to add to our support for these really early stage startups! :-)

We Can Predict And Design Four Score And Seven Years From Now

We Can Predict And Design Four Score And Seven Years From Now.