Darwin's half Cousin, and the bottoming out of the US Real Estate Market
A half cousin on Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, is in fact responsible for the initial conception of crowd wisdom. Galton was a curious and extraordinary individual with many contributions to many different fields in the 19th Century.
A famous anecdote describes an experiment Galton conducted that has affected much of the thought about democracy to this day. Galton witnessed a county fair bet, where the butchered weight of an Ox was the wager. None at the fair got it right, but when the results of all bets were averaged, it came within a fraction of the actual weight, and closer than any of the laymen guesses, or the ones of cattle experts.
This, to Galton, was a clue that the common wisdom of the crowd can be more useful than the independent thought of even experts. Thus a democracy in which everybody participates in the process would produce much wiser results than a hand full of statesmen and politicians.
Nevertheless tha concept was born and has continued to live. Recently a James Surowiecki wrote the book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which he takes the concepts a couple of leaps forward. A very interesting read to those into business, statistics, and sociology.
Either way, Zillow believes in the wisdom of crowds where it comes to assessing the state of the real estate market, and in fact they have a point. So go a head and join the poll below.
