Global Technology Office
100 Lake Hart Drive
Dept #21-00
407.826.2892

technology.ccci.org

The Wisdom of the Crowd

In a recent contest held at the bi-annual Campus Crusade U.S. Staff Conference at Colorado State University, the Global Technology Office repeated a famous experiment. M&M candies were put into a large jar and staff members were invited to register their estimate of how many M&M's were in the jar. There were no tricks, no hollow spaces in the middle.

Information about the estimates

Total number of estimates: 1,166
Low estimate: 132
High estimate: 135,000
Correct answer: 2,166 M&Ms (counted twice by two people)
Average of all estimates: 2,328
Average was within 7% of correct amount, even with huge variations in the estimates

The average was more accurate than 93% of all the people who estimated.

The wisdom of the crowd

There is an important principle at work here. All of us together are smarter than most of us individually. This is the body concept at work.

Do you remember the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? television show. Remember there were some ways to get help when a contestant was really stumped. One way was to call one of five people they had designated as experts in particular fields and ask them for the right answer.

Another way was to poll the studio audience who voted for what each member thought was the right answer.

Over the course of the years, the "experts" offered the right answer 65 percent of the time. That's pretty good, especially under pressure.

However, the "experts" wisdom could not compare with the wisdom of the studio crowd. These audience members picked the right answer 91% of the time.

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few, author James Surowiecki documents examples. He says, "On problems ranging from the simple to the very complex, groups are able to offer collectively smart answers even when most of the people within them are not exceptionally well-informed."

Our M&M's-in-a-jar was a repeat of a familiar beans-in-a-jar contest. Our contest had very similar results, with the average being better than 93% of all the other guesses.

Global ConneXion

We are building Global ConneXion to help us all, as laborers in local movements everywhere, be smarter than most of us are as individuals. Publisher's Weekly writes:

"If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's 'collective intelligence' will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. 'Wise crowds' need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions."

In our global Campus Crusade for Christ movement, we definitely have diversity of opinion. We are independent from one another. We revel in our decentralization. What we have not had is a good way to aggregate our opinions, to learn from one another, to distill knowledge into an "average".

The focus of Global ConneXion is to help us collect our knowledge and then to share it with others. The main GCX virtual team tool will be released sometime this winter. It is in beta testing right now.

GCX Search engine

One of the first tools developed as part of the Global ConneXion project is the global search engine and is available now. The GCX Search engine  is based on the Google Search Appliance. We have nearly 400 websites in almost 30 languages available to you. The GCX Search engine is one good method for aggregating the global knowledge of Campus Crusade so that all of us together know more than most of us as individuals.

So go ahead, try the GCX Search. Visit
  http://search.ccci.org

Our office exists to help identify and foster digital strategies which will help make sure that everyone knows someone who truly follows Jesus. Thank you for visiting our booth. Thank you for registering your M&M guess. We look forward to working with you as we all contribute our knowledge, share with others, and learn from each other.

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