#plataean

The Wisdom of Crowds: A Plataean & Spartan Perspective

“THE Plataeans were besieged: walled in by their enemies, the Spartans. They could make ladders to climb out, but how tall should they be?

Citizens were asked to guess the wall’s height by counting its bricks, with the most popular estimate taken as correct.

It worked: 212 duly escaped.

This episode from 428 BC is the first known use of the wisdom of crowds – collating estimates to arrive at an…