Musings of a Mumbai bloke

One of the often extended criticisms for political opinion polls is that people who do not matter quiet often form the sample group. This criticism is largely right because who knows how many people who take 10 seconds to give their choice or opinion on a candidate actually take the trouble to go and vote on election day. If the collective public opinion is not right, neither is an expert opinion often on the mark. James Surowiecki in his book Wisdom of the crowds very nicely explains how sometimes the "crowd" is more right than any expert opinion or public poll.

To explain this theory that crowds can be very 'wise' provided this certain conditions are met. In his book he gives an example of the famous show "Who wants to be a millionaire" in which the audience came up with the right answer 91% of the time. In contrast the phone a friend where the contestant called his chosen 'expert' were right only 65% of the time . He goes onto explain that, This was so because it fullfilled the condition that the members of the group were not talking to each other or working on a problem together. They were making individual guesses, which were aggregated and then averaged.

Another example of collective wisdom is that of the Iowa Electronic Market where the political candidates are traded as stock and people actually "buy" shares with real money.
Check out the graph on this link to find out what is the current status of the presidential race .Iowa Electronic Market

Another recent example:
Long before CBS and Dan Rather came forth with their apology about the fraudulent documents about Bush's Vietnam era records, the "Blogosphere" was filled with this opinion-- Wisdom of the Crowds !!!!