There is an interesting statistical phenomenon known as the “wisdom of the crowd.” National Geographics defines it as collective intelligence. A crowd is independently thinking as one. Ever see a school of fish or a flock of birds all moving as one entity?
It’s also seen where independent individuals converge toward the correct answer. This is where Mathnasium comes in! Each month Miss Wendy has an Estimation Station where our friends can guess at the number of objects in a container. The wisdom of the crowd theory maintains the guesses of the crowd should be close to the actual answer.
And……It worked! The December container was filled with 38 Santa candies. We had 23 people take guesses, and the average guess was 40.65; less than 7% from the actual number! Given that many of the guesses were made by young children, that is a strong showing. The high guess was 60, and the low guess was 21.
Read more about this theory here.
