Wisdom of the Crowd

This is a bit of interesting news about the human brain. For some time now it has been recognized that if you ask a lot of people a question like “What percent of US truck drivers are independents“, the statistical average of those answers will generally be closer to the real answer than if you just asked one person. This phenomenon is known as the wisdom of the crowd. A recent study showed that this crowd wisdom also comes into play when the crowd consist of only one person. In the study they asked 428 participants some trivia questions, and then, without warning, later asked them to answer the questions again. The result showed that on average, the combined result of a persons answers were more accurate than their individual answers alone. The scientists say this support the theory that cognition can be viewed as a statistical interface. When people guess the answers to trivia questions they will generate a range of possible values based on their knowledge, and since each response will represent one sample from the entire set, the more answers you have, the more accurate will, probabilistically, the combined result be. The study can be found here, and a SciAm article about it here.

 

And btw, about 9% of US truck drivers are independent.

Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to:

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization”

Le Clézio is a french author born in Nice in 1940, and since his debut in 1963 with Le Procès-verbal he has published more than 30 books, including short stories, essays and novels. Congratulations! Here is a link to a short biography and bibliography.

New Pictures of Mercury

The Messenger space probe has made a second flyby of Mercury, and taken a lot of awesome pictures of the surface. This unveiled a new 30% of the planets surface not previously photographed. Another probe, Mariner 10, flew by Mercury three times in 1974 and 1975, and was able to photograph a little under 50% of the planet, so with Messengers data from its two flybys we are much closer to 100% coverage. The ultimate goal of the Messenger probe is to enter orbit around Mercury, and this will happen in March 2011. 

That is an amazing picture…..

More pictures of Mercury inside…