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online at your own pace and

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about your success. Imagine your

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future differently at capella.edu. This

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is Planet Money from NPR. Hey

0:23

everyone, it's Erica Barris. The show you're going to hear

0:25

today originally aired in 2015. Here's

0:28

Jacob Goldstein and David Kestenbaum. Francis

0:31

Galton was the kind of person who

0:33

believed in experts. You know, people who

0:35

had studied things, people who knew stuff.

0:37

He figured they knew things that ordinary

0:39

people just did not. I mean, of

0:41

course they did, right? Obviously. One

0:43

day, Galton goes to a country fair. This

0:45

is about 100 years ago in England. And

0:47

there's this contest going on at the fair.

0:49

Guess the weight of the ox. Galton's

0:52

a scientist and a statistician. And he

0:54

figures, hey, I can do an experiment

0:56

here. He figures I'm going

0:58

to take everyone's guesses, take the average, and

1:01

compare that to the actual weight of the

1:03

ox. We heard this story from

1:05

James Serwicky. He's an economics journalist. So he

1:07

thought what you were going to end up

1:10

with was a really flawed guess. Because in

1:12

his mind, what you were doing was you

1:15

were taking guesses of a few smart people, a

1:17

few mediocre people, and then a lot of morons.

1:19

Because he basically thought everyone was dumb. So

1:22

he figured the group's guess was going to

1:24

be way, way off the mark. The contest

1:26

organizers gave Galton the little slips of paper

1:28

with everyone's guesses on him. He

1:30

took them, calculated the average. The average was 1,197

1:33

pounds. And

1:36

the ox? The ox weighed 1,198 pounds. So

1:40

that, in other words, the crowd's judgment

1:42

was essentially perfect. One pound

1:44

off? One pound off. This

1:46

is super creepy.

1:49

Right? What's going on

1:51

here? Is there some kind of collective

1:53

unconscious magic? I guess like a Ouija

1:55

board or something, right? But the idea

1:57

that underlies this, it is everywhere. of

2:00

the stock market, you know, thousands of random

2:02

people buying and selling shares. Like when you

2:04

hear that Apple stock went up or the

2:06

Dow plunged. That's basically people

2:08

guessing the weight of an ox. Yeah, it's

2:11

everywhere, right? It's the price of oil. It's

2:13

the price of orange juice. All kinds of

2:16

things that are really important to the world

2:18

work exactly this way. But why should it

2:20

work? Why should a bunch of random people,

2:22

a lot of whom have no idea what

2:24

they're doing, somehow magically produce an answer that

2:27

makes sense? Does this

2:29

really work? And if it does, why does it

2:31

work? Hello

2:33

and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jacob Goldstein. And

2:36

I'm David Kestenbaum. Today on the show, Mr. Galton,

2:38

we redo your experiments. What's

2:41

the cow's name? Penelope. Hi, Penelope.

2:44

Thanks for letting us weigh you. Can I

2:46

pet her? Yeah. She's chewing. One

2:49

pound off. Come on. This

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3:46

So we came up with a plan to repeat

3:49

Gaulton's experiment. Find a fair and a

3:51

cow and a big scale to weigh the cow.

3:53

And then we were

3:55

going to throw the question out to the crowd. Ask

3:58

the world, how much does this cow weigh? We

4:00

didn't want to just limit it to people at the fair,

4:02

so we figured we'd take some pictures, post them online, and

4:05

ask the whole world to guess. So

4:07

we went out to a county fair

4:09

in Burlington County, New Jersey. We

4:11

met Penelope the cow in the dairy tent. She

4:14

was sitting on a bunch of hay. Kirsten Kuzmich

4:16

was taken care of. Can you just

4:18

describe what she looks like? Yeah, she's

4:20

mostly black. She has white

4:22

legs and she has a white spot in the middle of

4:24

her head, but she's a big black cow. What

4:27

did you say? I said holy cow without

4:29

even realizing what I was saying. She's much

4:31

bigger. She just stood up. She's walking out

4:33

of the barn now. And she's way bigger

4:35

than I thought when she was sitting

4:38

down. We took some pictures of

4:40

you, Jacob, standing next to the cow for scale.

4:43

And just for fun, we decided to ask people at the

4:45

fair how much they thought Penelope weighed. As it happened, it

4:47

was kid's day, so there were a lot of kids there.

4:50

Hi, Penelope! Which

4:53

was fine, you know. They're non-experts. What's

4:55

your name? Caleb. How

4:57

much do you think Penelope weighs? Uh,

5:00

six pounds. How'd you come up with

5:02

that number? Because I'm six years old.

5:05

You guys want to guess how much this cow weighs? Sixty

5:09

hundred pounds. Like six

5:11

thousand? Yes. Do you know

5:13

how much you weigh? Not at all.

5:17

I'm sympathetic. Looking at Penelope, I had no idea

5:19

how much she weighed. Like, I didn't even know

5:21

how to think about it. Did she weigh more

5:24

than my car? Did she weigh less than my

5:26

car? I don't even know how much

5:28

my car weighs. More than a

5:30

cow. I want to say more than a cow. We

5:32

found an older group of kids, and yet they

5:35

also guessed on the low side, but they had

5:37

this bigger problem. This really more worrying thing. And

5:39

it was a problem that adults also seemed

5:41

to have. And it was this. The

5:43

first kid said a number. And then

5:46

all the other kids said basically the

5:48

same number. Numbers that were like too

5:50

close to the first kid. It's like they

5:52

were incapable of guessing anything different. My name's

5:55

Lisa. And Lisa, how old are you?

5:57

I'm ten. How much do

5:59

you think that cow weighs? Um,

6:02

200 pounds. My name is

6:05

Gabriella. I'm 10 and I think the

6:07

cow weighs 300 pounds. My

6:10

name is Caleb and I'm 7 years old

6:12

and I think the cow weighs 300 pounds.

6:15

Oh Caleb. People

6:17

are not that different from cows. We heard.

6:19

If we don't know something, we look for

6:22

a leader, even if the leader

6:24

maybe doesn't know anything. To know

6:26

if he finished chewing and we took her over

6:28

to be weighed. It's actually

6:30

pretty unusual to want to weigh a cow

6:32

and the scale they had at the fair was not

6:34

for cows. What kind of scale

6:36

is this? It's actually like a truck scale

6:39

is what it's for. Same solid scale

6:41

they'll use for big trucks and stuff. Which

6:44

we use it to weigh the tractors during the tractor

6:46

pool. It'll work for a cow? Yep. Test

6:49

him, you were obsessed, paranoid, arguably

6:51

paranoid about keeping the result of this

6:53

secret. You didn't want it to leak

6:55

out I guess. Yeah, and all these

6:57

people had gathered. Actually, can

7:00

we seriously clear everybody out except for just a

7:02

minimum of people? Can we

7:04

swear you the people? Okay, just you. Everybody else over there.

7:07

Kirsten walked Penelope up onto the scale

7:09

and we watched this little digital display.

7:11

Oh. Yep.

7:14

Okay. It's 1,355

7:17

pounds. Pretty

7:21

good? 1,355

7:26

pounds. We walked Penelope back to the

7:28

dairy tent and then we went home. The

7:30

next day we posted photos online of the cow

7:32

and you. And me, right. I was there to

7:34

give some sense of perspective. We put you on

7:37

the tractor scale. Yes, 165 pounds. That's how much

7:39

I weigh. And

7:42

then our colleague Kwok Trung Bui here put it

7:44

all up online. Guess the weight of this cow.

7:46

And the idea was, our hope was, that lots

7:48

and lots of people would guess. Because

7:51

the fundamental question here, the thing we're trying

7:53

to figure out is if you have a

7:55

bunch of random people making their best guess

7:57

at something, do you get close to it?

8:00

You. Get. Out the truth Do you

8:02

get close to the right answer? So we put

8:04

it up. And we waited for the results to

8:06

come in. Or it's been a for

8:08

hello I'm in. Two minutes. So

8:10

many interests. As sitting

8:13

answers reload reload for him.

8:15

Go. Still for

8:17

same. Still, Fifteen. Come

8:19

on. Oh My. God. That's.

8:22

Organ and gets his team. Will

8:24

retreat. This. Method

8:28

you're here Very been buried after taking care

8:30

of. We

8:32

also showed the pictures of me and and the

8:34

cow to James Sir, which is the New Yorker

8:36

writer. We talked with the beating of the show

8:38

yes we wrote a book called the Wisdom of

8:41

Crowds so we asked him to guess remember hear

8:43

the actual weight of the cow One thousand, three

8:45

hundred and fifty five pounds. Or. And

8:47

I would guess that the cow

8:49

disease. Seven hundred

8:52

and twenty five pounds. How

8:55

did you come up with that

8:57

number? Ah, I don't know. Maybe

8:59

looks like four or five times

9:02

jacob size. I guess I'll answer.

9:04

cows are honored I had a

9:06

dancer or not than humans. Ah.

9:09

So. You know, have. Pretty

9:11

random. Actually pretty random and pretty

9:13

wrong. We told themselves actual weights

9:15

twice as heavy as his guess.

9:19

It's effect as at it's a sad commentary

9:21

that someone has been talking about. An Oxford's

9:23

this law has absolutely no clue how much

9:25

a cow ways we get a crowd of

9:28

people like you. Could

9:30

be terrible Interview bad shape I'm pray and

9:32

somebody with that guessing to twenty two hundred

9:34

on the other end because because the key

9:36

question is what's the average gonna be right,

9:38

Is the crowd gonna get it right? Or

9:41

at least how close are they gonna get

9:43

So we'll leftists up online for five days?

9:45

Let people guess for five days or colleague

9:47

boot tally that all up. David you and

9:49

I came into the studio we didn't know

9:52

the results and buoyed team and to give

9:54

us the numbers. First of all,

9:56

how many people guest? so

9:58

the number people that guests 17,205

10:00

people. 17,000?

10:04

That's legit. That's good. That's good. It's

10:06

as if you got like a small

10:09

town to all guess. But we took

10:11

those guesses, added them up, and calculated

10:13

the average. This was the big moment.

10:16

You guys ready? 1,287 pounds. 1,287.

10:21

Penelope actually weighed 1,355. Pretty

10:27

close, right? So that's to

10:29

within like what, 60-ish pounds?

10:32

That was pretty impressive. Yeah, I mean they're

10:34

only like 5% off, you know? And

10:36

okay, sure, the Galton thing was 1 pound

10:39

off. This isn't that. But remember, this is

10:41

just a bunch of random people, you know,

10:43

looking at this little cow picture in their

10:45

Facebook feed on their iPhone. And

10:48

here's another amazing thing. When we ask people to

10:50

guess, we also ask them this other question.

10:52

We asked, are you an expert? Have you

10:54

ever worked with cows? Because remember, Galton thought

10:56

experts might be better. And

10:59

3,000 some people answered yes to that question. Jacob, you

11:01

wondered where they really, really asked for it. I mean,

11:04

sure, these are just people clicking a button online. So

11:06

we emailed a bunch of them. And

11:08

we heard back, and they did seem pretty

11:10

expert. You know, a lot of them were

11:13

farmers. One of them mentioned the quote, absence

11:15

of a visible udder. Actually, a few of

11:17

them mentioned that. And apparently that tells you

11:20

something about how old the cow is,

11:22

how much it weighs. So how did the experts

11:24

do? Here's the answer. So the average

11:26

guess for the experts was

11:29

1,272 pounds. They

11:32

were worse. They were worse.

11:34

It's amazing. So, okay,

11:36

so maybe that is wisdom of the crowds.

11:39

To be fair, the experts were only marginally

11:41

worse. But they did not beat the crowd.

11:43

We told Sir Wicke about these results, and

11:45

he wasn't surprised. In fact, he writes in

11:47

his book, chasing the expert is a mistake.

11:49

We should ask the crowd. And the fact

11:51

that the larger crowd got it to within

11:54

5%, he said that seems about right

11:56

to him. When People do versions of

11:58

this experiment asking people to get it, the

12:00

number of jelly beans in a jar. For

12:02

instance, the crowd usually gets it to within

12:04

three to five percent. In one

12:06

things is interesting about this is even

12:09

though I've written a book and done

12:11

this experiment a number of tests every

12:13

time I do it in every time

12:15

I hear the results are my is

12:17

not gonna work is to accept the

12:19

spurs The idea is so counterintuitive, you

12:21

know it's it's pretty extraordinary in that

12:24

regard. On the power of this. To.

12:26

Actually lead the group arrive at a really

12:28

good decisions as it's eerie there's some injury

12:30

about it. I think. It is

12:33

eerie area. It is there something magical

12:35

about it. It seems magical. I think

12:37

it's not magic, it's just math. But

12:39

it seems magical sir. What he says.

12:41

the reason the seems to work is

12:44

that every person's guess is contributing some

12:46

new little piece of information. Everybody is

12:48

different. Everybody thinks lately differently when they're

12:50

trying to guess the cows weights. Maybe

12:52

one person studies that photo on the

12:55

cow from the side. Some people probably

12:57

trying to figure out how many Jacobs

12:59

would sit in the cow. Someone else

13:01

might know. How. Much a horse ways and

13:04

can go from there like every person's

13:06

guess in some ways reflects their specific

13:08

a life experience of judging the size

13:10

of things in the world just from

13:12

decades of living. Like every person's mind

13:14

is a different scale for weighing the

13:16

cow. Any one of those scales isn't

13:18

gonna be a great scale, right? Each

13:20

one of those is probably gonna be

13:22

wrong. There's gonna be some error in

13:24

every single one. The good in some

13:26

way, but they also have some problem

13:28

with them. Yeah, And and one of the

13:30

essential. Thing says, those problems ten the

13:32

cancel each other out rights. Maybe one

13:34

person is wrong two hundred pounds heights,

13:37

but the next guy is wrong. Two

13:39

hundred pounds low so that the wrong

13:41

parts the wrong. This kind of washes

13:43

out and in the end, what you're

13:45

left with is all those little bits

13:47

of information and the result is amazingly

13:49

good. You know? collectively, we do seem

13:52

to know what we're doing. So he

13:54

says there are certainly times when this

13:56

does not work like think stock market

13:58

panics or bubble you're a big problem.

14:00

Is that thing we saw with. The

14:02

kids at the beginning where one person says

14:04

a number and and everybody else around I'm

14:07

just kind of latches onto that number. There's

14:09

actually a technical term for this. it's information

14:11

cascade flag. My neighbor just bought a house

14:13

and seems like lot of money pay for

14:15

house but he did fine. I can do

14:18

the same thing or everyone's by an that

14:20

stock must be a good stock. I'm gonna

14:22

buy. The. Stock Market is

14:24

not perfect. But what is amazing

14:26

about the stock market is that

14:29

investors individually, even very good investors

14:31

are oftentimes irrational. They have tiny

14:33

bits of information, they're making decisions

14:35

based on emotion or on, you

14:37

know, some tips they got and

14:40

yet collectively we trust them to

14:42

set the value of all of

14:44

these companies as as scary when

14:46

you think about it. But ah,

14:48

the interesting thing is, I don't

14:50

think there's a better way to

14:53

do. It our in there for is not

14:55

a more effective way of doing and either. This

14:57

is why it is so hard to beat the

14:59

stock market. The Wisdom: The crowd

15:01

is pretty good and the people seem

15:03

to be that to say I can

15:05

be the stock market often. They are

15:07

just plain lucky in our experiment. For

15:09

example, there were fifteen people who got

15:11

the cows wait exactly right. They were

15:13

off base Zero pounds. We. Picked one

15:15

of them at random as or winner. We call them

15:18

up to tell the news and to see how he

15:20

didn't. Hello

15:24

This Harris. Yeah. I

15:26

was a gown. Harris Park is twenty years

15:28

old, is a student at Hamilton College. Never

15:30

touched a cow in his life, in fact,

15:32

could not even remember his guess. We told

15:35

them he'd guest one thousand three hundred and

15:37

fifty five pounds and that the way to

15:39

the cow was also one thousand three hundred

15:41

fifty five pounds. Oh. My. God.

15:45

You one. Of her

15:47

that amazing. You. Wanna know

15:49

how I got to that? Yes yes

15:51

I google it. I googled average weight

15:53

of female cow and the said shout

15:56

at it. So.

15:58

pops up in little box

16:01

and it comes from dairymooz.com.

16:09

derrymooz.com says the average weight of

16:11

a cow is 1500 pounds depending

16:13

on the age and whatever. Harris

16:15

looked at the picture of Penelope the cow and said she looks

16:17

a little bit on the small side. He

16:20

went with 1355. It was just a guess. Yeah,

16:22

completely guessed. So we're going to

16:24

send you the cheapest

16:27

plastic cow trophy we can find.

16:30

We talked to the Harris about what we should put

16:32

on the trophy because it's a bit of a puzzle,

16:34

right? Like should it say, I got lucky? He

16:37

was actually fine with that. He said that

16:39

made sense. I was pushing for mutual fund

16:41

manager of the year. Robert here suggested someone

16:43

had to win. In the

16:45

end, I think we are just going to

16:47

say congratulations. Congratulations. This

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18:29

right, we got some footnotes. You know how at the end

18:31

of research papers, they put all the technical details there? Couple

18:34

things we want to tell you. When

18:36

we calculated the average of the guesses, we did

18:38

throw out outliers, like the person who just held

18:40

down the nine key as their guess, 9999999999999. Thanks

18:45

for that. Also for people who love the median,

18:47

we calculated the median too. I am a median lover.

18:49

The median is the value in the middle where half

18:51

the guesses are higher, half the guesses are lower. The

18:54

median was pretty close to the average. The median was

18:56

1,245 pounds, within

18:59

8% of Penelope's actual

19:01

weight. The median expert guess

19:03

was a little worse, but pretty close. You

19:05

can find all the numbers online at

19:08

npr.org/money. Also, there are some pictures

19:10

of Penelope the cow, among other

19:12

things, on our Instagram feed, at

19:14

Planet Money. You can also email

19:16

us, planetmoney at npr.org. Thank

19:18

you also to everybody for guessing. Thank you

19:20

to Penelope the cow, and to Rosemary Kay

19:23

and the other folks at the Burlington County

19:25

Farm Fair. This episode was

19:27

originally produced by Nadia Wilson, and

19:29

today's rerun was produced by Liza

19:31

Yeager and Rachel Cohn, with additional

19:33

audio support by Valentina Rodriguez Sanchez.

19:36

Brian Urstath edited this episode. Alice

19:38

Goldmark is our executive producer. I'm Erica

19:40

Barris, this is NPR. Thanks

19:43

for listening. How

19:47

heavy is the cow? Absolutely no idea.

19:51

Absolutely no idea. I really

19:53

wouldn't. Like, is 10,000 pounds sound too heavy,

19:55

or who knows? I

19:58

really have no idea. The

20:00

twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand I think

20:02

it's going over the limit. Yeah, no.

20:05

So less than twenty thousand. Or. Less than

20:07

twenty thousand. More than five pounds.

20:09

More than five pounds. More

20:12

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