Collective Intelligence, Successful Teams, and the Female Factor

Does collective intelligence exist?

This was the question that a group of researchers from MIT and Carnegie Mellon set out to answer and the results of their study have been published in the article, "Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups," in the October 29, 2010 volume of Science.

Clearly, the "design" of groups and teams has implications not only for management and a spectrum of organizations but also for engineering and even military operations (and I would even add educational institutions, including universities).

I came upon a reference to this study in yesterday's Boston Globe, in an article written by Carolyn Y. Johnson, entitled: "Group IQ." The article contains an interview with one of the co-authors, Thomas Malone of MIT's Sloan School, and it also included comments from Iain Couzin of Princeton (who was a fellow panelist with me at the World Science Festival's Traffic panel in NYC in June 2009).

The Science article was co-authored by Anita Williams Woolley, Christopher F. Chabris, Alex Pentland, Nada Hashmi, and Thomas W. Malone.

Pentland is the author of the truly fascinating book, Honest Signals, and we had the pleasure of hosting him in our Speaker Series at the Isenberg School.

He will be presenting a tutorial at the SBP 2011 conference on March 28, 2011 at the University of Maryland.

I was sufficiently intrigued by the Globe article to go and read the Science article.

In the article, the authors define a group's collective intelligence, c, as the general ability to perform a wide variety of tasks. Interestingly, they found that:

The "c factor" is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group!

The moral from this research study and "bosses" should listen up: do not dominate the conversation and include females (may I even say "diversity" matters) in the group if you wish to enhance collective intelligence and problem-solving, since social sensitivity makes a quantifiable difference.

Interestingly, recently, I published a paper on the wisdom of crowds in transportation networks and the disappearance of the Braess paradox, which received a lot of media attention. I expect the intriguing issues being raised by such studies will stimulate further research. In the meantime, I am enjoying very much working with my fantastic and diverse team at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks!

Avatars, Computer Modeling, and Networks

I always say that one of the best things about travel is the people that you (might) meet. My most recent trip (about which I have also blogged about) was to give an invited talk at the Social Theory and Social Computing: Steps to Integration Workshop that took place May 22-23, 2010 in gorgeous Honolulu, Hawaii. Not only was the venue perfect but the talks at this workshop were stimulating, thought-provoking, and at, times,, may I say, somewhat controversial. The passion for research was obvious among the speakers and what I appreciated tremendously was the interdisciplinary focus of the research that was presented.

Let me say, that the organizers and the speakers at this workshop have the courage to break through disciplinary boundaries because that is the best way to create new synergies and to stimulate new discoveries. Doing business, as usual, will not yield innovations.

At the workshop, I had the pleasure of meeting (among other fascinating individuals) Professor Barry Silverman, who combines systems engineering (and actually told me that he was also trained in operations research) with behavioral science, and is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lo and behold, last Sunday, right on the first page of The Boston Globe, was a feature article on the research that Professor Silverman is conducting under the provocative title: Knowing the Enemy, One Avatar at a Time. The article discussed his research on the computer modeling of villagers in Afghanistan, which has attracted a lot of funding support but also a bit of controversy (any research that goes against the grain is bound to be challenged).

More information about the workshop at which Professor Silverman spoke can be found here and his presentation may be downloaded (if you are impatient) here.

You can read more about Professor Silverman's research as well as the complementary research of Professor Kathleen Carley of CMU (who I have had the pleasure of meeting several times) in an earlier article on the types of networks that they study in the IEEE Spectrum.

The above group photo was taken at the Hawaii workshop. Professor Silverman is the tallest standing in the back row wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Women Can Not be Held Back -- Interesting Take on the AAUW Report

I guess that it is all in one's perspective and that is precisely one of the big issues and problems. Jeff Jacoby in today's Boston Globe, in an OpEd piece, comments on the AAUW report, "Why So Few?" which identified “striking disparity’’ between the numbers of men and women in the so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and math. His take on this research study appears under the headlines of his article, Good News on Women in Science, which is completely contrary to recent articles in the media that he cites: “Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences,’’ from The New York Times and the AOL News in the “Report: Stereotypes, Bias Hurt Women in Math and Science,’’ in which I am quoted.

Jacoby notes that: In the workforce women are now highly visible in many scientific fields. My take on this, even if there is only one of us, and, especially if we are in the minority, females tend to stick out like sore thumbs, so, obviously, we will be highly visible, even if there is only one of us! I recall giving a plenary lecture in Switzerland, yes, in the new millennium to an auditorium filled with only males. I recall when "she" would identify me since I was one of the very few women in my field. Even today, I am the only female in my subject area in my department and the level of service that I do as a named chaired professor is tiers above that done by any male but it isn't recognized nor noticed. So I get up around 3AM in the morning so that I can do my research before the official "work day" begins.

Jacoby writes: but where women do have an interest, they cannot be held back. Entering a profession does not mean that one will necessarily succeed in it and the need to prove oneself constantly never stops. Luckily, loving the research that one does plus having great students makes up, in part, for some of the extreme workload.

Here is the link to my earlier post on this blog on this subject.

Braess paradox, queuing (standing in line), and the Boston Globe

I was pleased to see James Parker's column in the Boston Globe on queuing, which he says is what separates man from beasts. He gives credit to anthropologists for noting that queuing represents stable cooperative equilibrium and then goes out to note the Braess paradox, due to Professor Dietrich Braess, which showed that the addition of a new road may make everyone worse off in terms of travel time in the network. However, in the column he misrepresents the Braess paradox by saying that it reflects that two lines are shorter than a single line or queue. In the Braess paradox, the addition of a new road results in multiple roads or links then being shared and these are not parallel roads of different lengths.

For the exposition of the Braess paradox, along with links to the original Braess article, which was published in German, as well as to the translation to English, which Braess and I did with my former doctoral student, Tina Wakolbinger please click here. We had the pleasure of hosting the visit of Professor Braess at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in April 2006. Of course, if one can control the flow of traffic then such a paradox cannot occur. It also does not occur in the case of uncongested networks in which the travel time of the link is independent of the flow on the link.

Last week, when I was at the Transportation Network Design and Economics Symposium at Northwestern University, I asked Professor T. John Kim of the University of Illinois at Urbana what he thought of the removal of the downtown arterial in Seoul, Korea, to recover the river and to restore the surrounding parks. Professor Kim had, of course, visited that part of Seoul and had discussed the matter with the civil engineering professor who had done the study prior to this road removal (like the reverse of the Braess paradox). He and others consider this road removal a great success.

The New York Times last week ran an article on the closure of Broadway between 47th Street and 42nd Street and the full analysis of the impacts on the traffic flow and travel time should be out fairly soon. In any event, the closure of Broadway appears to have had a similar effect to that of congestion pricing in London.

Queuing is a topic well-known to operations researchers and management scientists so I was pleased to see this topic featured in the Boston Globe.

Academics, Athletics, and Haiti

The Boston Globe has a wonderful article on Vladimir Ducasse, a UMass Amherst football lineman, who is trying out on the Gulf Coast for the Senior Bowl with dreams of being selected by the National Football League (NFL). The article traces the history of this star athlete and discusses his focus and discipline in light of the earthquake and devastation in his birthplace, Haiti.

The article notes that Ducasse selected UMass Amherst, first and foremost, for its academics, and, next, for its athletics -- football. It talks about the trust that he has earned and his love and respect for the coaches as well as his abilities to concentrate on the tasks before him, given the immense distractions of the events in his home country.

We wish Vladimir Ducasse as well as his countrymen all the best as they begin to rebuild and reconstruct Haiti.

Miracle on Ice and the Winter Olympics --15 Million Minutes of Fame

Today's Boston Globe has a feature article on Mike Eruzione in its Sunday magazine, complete with a cover photo. The article is entitled, 15 Million Minutes of Fame. As you may (or may not) recall, Eruzione scored the winning hockey goal in the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980. The article covers the US winning the hockey gold medal by a team that was assembled by the coach, Herb Brooks, and the life that followed for Mike Eruzione. Some of you may have seen the movie, Miracle on Ice, that was based on this extraordinary team, their coach, and the series of victories that led to their gold medal. On January 15, 2009, we had the Miracle on the Hudson with the "safe" landing of the USAIR plane in the Hudson River by Captain Chesley "Sully"Sullenberger. Nice to reflect on the Miracle on Ice, as well, especially with the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

We were at the Olympics training facility at Lake Placid two summers ago since my daughter, who is a figure skater, was training there. I thought that I would share the photos above which we took there, as we start to anticipate with a lot of excitement the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, that begin on February 12, 2010. The photos include one of the tableau of medals given out at the 1932 Olympics at which Sonja Henie, the figure skater (and later medical doctor and motion picture star) excelled. The rink in the photo above is where the Miracle on Ice took place.

Calling American Students Lazy is Hurtful

In the meantime, I have heard from Dr. Dennis Hanno, the undergraduate dean at Babson. Dr. Hanno was a former colleague of mine at the Isenberg School of Management, and also a former neighbor in Amherst. He is an amazing individual, educator, and administrator. I urge you to read the commentary on his blog regarding the recent OpEd piece in the Boston Globe that I wrote about below. I am adding this link today (December 24, 2009) due to the uproar created by the OpEd piece. Please read Dean Hanno's commentary here.

In today's Boston Globe there is an OpEd piece written by Kara Miller, who teaches at Babson College. The article is entitled, "My lazy American students," and the author writes how she prefers having students from other countries in her classes since she feels that they have a much better work ethic, despite their, perhaps, poorer English.

I found this OpEd piece painful to read and insulting to all the hard-working students, American or international ones. This past semester was not easy with the H1N1 pandemic, with many families losing jobs and income because of the recession, among other additional stressors on both students and faculty alike.

I would like to counter the arguments in that article and say, in contrast, my students at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst were terrific this past semester. They showed up to do their presentations despite a big snowstorm. They showed up at their final exam besides it being dark and cold outside (and the heat was up to 80 degrees for some reason in the exam classroom). ALL of my students handed in their presentations on time and the students in my undergraduate class at the Isenberg School of Management were some of the best and the most hard-working ones I have ever had the privilege to teach.

American students are terrific as are the international ones! Interestingly, in my undergraduate class this term I had only one international student (from Hong Kong) whereas in my graduate class I had only one American student with all others being international ones.

As I have heard it said before "Apples don't fall far from the tree." Faculty serve as role models and are as much at fault if the students don't do well as the students are themselves. Honestly, if you can't say something nice perhaps it's best to let it be left unsaid.

My Boston Globe Letter to the Editor

My Letter to the Editor, provoked by the front page article in last Sunday's Boston Globe on the closure of the Lake Champlain Bridge and the social and economic ramifications, is now online. I blogged about this article last week and also brought it to my transportation and logistics class last Monday to share with my students. Winter is approaching and when the lake is covered with ice, the ferries will not be able to provide an alternative mode of transportation. The closure of this bridge has added as much as three hours to citizens' commutes and played havoc on businesses and workers' and their families' schedules and routines.

My letter argues for appropriate education in infrastructure planning and management as well as teaching about the optimization of resources, including funds to improve our country's infrastructure. The letter also argues for the need for leadership to identify which links and nodes should be repaired and better maintained before our infrastructure deteriorates even further.

As I say in the letter: Before it is too late, the decision makers need to identify how to best maintain the critical and way-too-fragile networks upon which our society and economy depend.

We have the tools but, sadly, we lack the leadership.

Indeed, Patrick Qiang and I in our Fragile Networks book provide a wealth of methodological tools to help in the identification of the importance and ranking of bridges and roads. It is high time that our country appropriately invests (and repairs) our infrastructure!

Another Critical Link is Closed and Citizens Pay the Price

With all the attention the closure of the San Francisco Bay bridge has been getting you may have missed another bridge closure on the opposite side of the US -- that of the Lake Champlain bridge that connects Vermont with New York State. The bridge was closed on October 16, 2009, and it is uncertain whether it will even be able to reopen after the winter. It is a truss bridge and its design is similar to the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in August 2007, with 13 deaths resulting. The Lake Champlain bridge is a critical link. Its closure has resulted in commuters having to add 90 minutes to their commutes or to wait as much as three hours for a ferry to shuttle them across the lake. Small business owners are losing thousands of dollars a day and healthcare workers are having difficulty reaching the hospital that they work in.

The pain and suffering and economic and societal losses are graphically depicted in the article, Lake Champlain Bridge, in the Boston Globe. This is another example where deferred maintenance and inattention to the nation's transportation infrastructure has now yielded substantive losses. It also shows that the networks upon which our society and economy depend are more than just the ties that bind but they are the channels and routes of people and goods flows. Transportation planners and government officials should have realized the importance of the Lake Champlain bridge, whose removal has resulted in rerouting of thousands of commuters, who have had to add substantively to their commutes and/or switch their modes of transportation entirely.

A few brave souls are even now crossing Lake Champlain by kayaks!

Some quotes from the article that are haunting:

It is so much more than a bridge.

We feel like we're cut off from the world.

As for the stimulus funds, it is now being reported that over half of the jobs saved were in education; see the coverage in this article, Schools are where Stimulus Saved Jobs, in the New York Times. The funds were also used to shore up, temporarily, many public universities.

Educational institutions need to enhance their programs associated with network infrastructure.

As more and more schools try to develop "revenue-generation" programs, due to serious pending financial shortfalls, after the stimulus funds run out, as reported in today's New York Times, attention should be given to develop programs that truly help our country to rebuild its infrastructure from its educational institutions to its transportation systems, the financial system, manufacturing and logistical networks, healthcare, the Internet, as well as our energy networks. Stop-gap, "trendy" programs are just quick fixes, if they are fixes, at all.