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francis galton

levy · 2026-06-30T13:14:25.586888-07:00

a scientist who, with every one of his studies, is bound to inspire both admiration and astonishment, in my opinion. i wanted to share one of his studies that surprised me the most. he was the first person to put forth the concept of "the wisdom of the crowd." in 1906, galton came across an interesting kind of contest at a livestock fair. in this contest, whoever correctly guessed an ox's weight won the prize. about 800 people gave their guesses, and galton noted them all down. but the thing is, not one of them actually came close to the right answer. among these 800 people there were folks like butchers and farmers who could easily estimate an ox's weight, but right alongside them were people who had no clue about the subject. the ox turned out to weigh about 543 kilograms. the person who made the closest guess took the prize. then galton decided to take the average of all the guesses and compare the result. the average came out to around 542 kilograms. the diverse crowd was smarter than even the best expert's guess. galton published his findings in a paper, and as a result, the wisdom of crowds was born. these observations helped develop the concepts of the mean and variation, and they led him to formulate the fundamental statistical concept of standard deviation.

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