The wisdom of crowds why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations

Summary: The wisdom of crowds has a deceptively simple and counterintuitive premise: If you want to make a correct decision or solve a problem, large groups of people are smarter than a few experts. This is a book that explains in a completely new way how the world really works. For his examples, author James Surowiecki ranges across a wide range of subject areas, from finance and economics to computer science to biology. (One example from elsewhere: WalMart prices its goods according to mass perceptions of those goods' value; values which are commonly known are underpriced; those which are not are overpriced.) Surowiecki goes against the conventional wisdom and draws startling conclusions about society, free markets, scientific research, the environment, and even our democratic form of government.