In my last post about the book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” we explored the question…
If you had to meet someone in New York on a specific day but had no way of contacting them, when and where would you meet?
This proved to be a provocative question and the answers varied greatly. In the book, author James Surowiecki explains that when large groups were asked this question, 40% of the respondents all picked the same time and same place. This is pretty amazing given that New York has over 47,000 square miles and there are 24 hours in the day.
When I thought about the question I immediately thought about the Statue of Liberty, while my wife though of the Empire State Building.
The popular 40% answer was Grand Central Station at 12 Noon.
It was interesting that out of the 6 comments on this blog no one picked this location.
As I have continued on in the book one of the other fascinating facts is the accuracy of respondents in the Game show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire“.
Here is today’s question for you.
Regis Philbin has just asked you a $2000 question on the show.
Would it be best to…
- Listen to the Audience and take their advice
- Phone a friend and take their advice
- Reduce the answers from four to two and increase your odds by 50%
The answer may surprise you as the percentages vary greatly.
I would like to hear your comments and ideas.
I’ll post the answer tomorrow.
In the meantime you can pick up James’ fascinating book here or download the audio version from iTunes.
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Author, Speaker, and Digital Media Creator. Personal Development Blogger. Ideas for Success!
Which I would pick depends on the question itself.
Ask the Audience: Entertainment question (tv, celebs, and other useless BS)
Phone a friend: Esoteric trivia in a subject that I have a friend who is highly knowledgeable in
Reduce 50% : If it’s not pop culture, and I don’t have a person on my friends list that’s a expert in that field.
Interesting, at first I thought I would reduce it to two, but then I thought, what if one of my phone a friends was an expert in this area? And then I thought, this is the $2k questions, would I want to waist one of my life lines on this amount? And then the answer I came to was listen to the audience and hopefully they will confirm my intuitions.
I would reduce the answers by 50% and rely on my own intuition. The thought is by introducing one more new people and new ideas into a solution that you would increase your odds so you should use that for something bigger.
Up until recently, the audience has been pretty reliable. But lately I’ve seen them be dead wrong. Still, I think having the larger group increases your chances, so I’d go with the audience.
Hmm.. if I know my friend is an authority on the subject being asked, I would call him/her. Else I would rather listen the the audience and pray that the audience for the evening is a rather smart bunch!
At the $2,000 level I’d ask the audience, unless I had already used them for a lower level question.