The benefits of multi-individual information assessment is nicely illustrated by a demonstration that financial analyst Paul Johnson has done over the years. He asks students to predict who will win the Academy Award in several different categories. He tabulates the predictions and comes up with group predictions—the nominees chosen by the most people for each category. What he finds, again and again, is that the group predictions are better than the predictions of any individual. In 1998, for example, the group picked eleven out of twelve winners, while the average individual in the group
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