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!
Showing posts with label wisdom of crowds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wisdom of crowds. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Experiential Marketing and the Negation of the Braess Paradox with the Wisdom of Crowds
I enjoyed reading the recent blogpost by the Texas-based marketing firm, bloomfield knoble, that discussed how waiting times during events such as visits to museums, amusement parks, and even to Vegas casinos should be manipulated to garner the best experiences for customers/clients. And speaking of Las Vegas, Adam Nagourney writes in the NYTimes that it needs help!
bloomfield knoble connected waiting times (think of standing in line to get to what you really want to do) in the context of marketing experiences with the Braess paradox, which identifies a situation where a new route, when added, under user-optimizing or selfish behavior, may result in an increase in travel time for all.
I was pleased that in bloomfield knoble's post my most recent work on the subject proving that the Braess paradox will be negated under a suitably high demand was also noted so that there is a wisdom of crowds phenomenon taking place.
The post also recognized that such paradoxes can occur in other types of networks (and not just in transportation ones), a related topic that I have done a lot of research on.
Coincidentally, recently, while teaching my Management Science graduate class I shared the story with my students about how one can reduce the perception of onerous waiting times by making the experience of waiting more pleasant. Those of us in this area of research and practice enjoy recalling how the waiting times for elevators to arrive can be reduced -- just add mirrors to the outer doors so that people can admire themselves and, perhaps, one another, and time will go by "faster." The same holds for how queues in banks or amusement parks can be designed or in playing music while customers are waiting for some service (but recognizing that not everyone has the same taste in music).
bloomfield knoble connected waiting times (think of standing in line to get to what you really want to do) in the context of marketing experiences with the Braess paradox, which identifies a situation where a new route, when added, under user-optimizing or selfish behavior, may result in an increase in travel time for all.
I was pleased that in bloomfield knoble's post my most recent work on the subject proving that the Braess paradox will be negated under a suitably high demand was also noted so that there is a wisdom of crowds phenomenon taking place.
The post also recognized that such paradoxes can occur in other types of networks (and not just in transportation ones), a related topic that I have done a lot of research on.
Coincidentally, recently, while teaching my Management Science graduate class I shared the story with my students about how one can reduce the perception of onerous waiting times by making the experience of waiting more pleasant. Those of us in this area of research and practice enjoy recalling how the waiting times for elevators to arrive can be reduced -- just add mirrors to the outer doors so that people can admire themselves and, perhaps, one another, and time will go by "faster." The same holds for how queues in banks or amusement parks can be designed or in playing music while customers are waiting for some service (but recognizing that not everyone has the same taste in music).
Sunday, September 19, 2010
What a Week It Was!
This week has certainly flown by quickly!
Besides teaching my two courses and holding office hours, I was:
1. interviewed for a radio program on the news of my latest publication, that was highlighted both on physorg.com and on the homeland security newswire and was also the subject of a UMass Amherst news release;
2. interviewed by several journalists on my research on the negation of the Braess paradox and the wisdom of crowds, the subject of my latest article, and asked to comment on some preprints of other researchers;
3. contacted by UMass Amherst development to see whether I could help host an executive who is also an alum;
4. contacted by a representative who was wondering whether I was willing to have a photo of George Dantzig (the founder of operations research who passed away at ago 90) and me, that was taken at a conference, be used in a new edition of a book, and whether I was willing to provide a high resolution image of the photo (coincidentally, I had just shared that photo with the students in my graduate class the day before);
5. a participant in a teleconference for the SBP 2011 conference that I am serving as the tutorial chair for;
6. busy working on a multiple investigator NSF proposal, and
7. trying to finish up two research papers on sustainable supply chain management and on electronic recycling with collaborators;
8. busy contacting all the INFORMS student chapter Faculty Advisors and Chapter Presidents that I am responsible for to see how their chapters were doing and the activities that they were planning for this semester, and
9. trying to catch up with the reviewing of a pile of papers;
10. taking out a senior colleague to lunch who is a distinguished teacher, since I wanted to document his pedagogical wisdom (will write about what I learned later on this blog), and
11. starting my reviews of proposals for a scientific foundation of another country (luckily, this country pays for this kind of hard work).
All of the above I somehow managed to do as our community was having a very hard time dealing with the sudden death of a terrific colleague.
And the above does not even mention any duties/activities as a wife and mother!
Besides teaching my two courses and holding office hours, I was:
1. interviewed for a radio program on the news of my latest publication, that was highlighted both on physorg.com and on the homeland security newswire and was also the subject of a UMass Amherst news release;
2. interviewed by several journalists on my research on the negation of the Braess paradox and the wisdom of crowds, the subject of my latest article, and asked to comment on some preprints of other researchers;
3. contacted by UMass Amherst development to see whether I could help host an executive who is also an alum;
4. contacted by a representative who was wondering whether I was willing to have a photo of George Dantzig (the founder of operations research who passed away at ago 90) and me, that was taken at a conference, be used in a new edition of a book, and whether I was willing to provide a high resolution image of the photo (coincidentally, I had just shared that photo with the students in my graduate class the day before);
5. a participant in a teleconference for the SBP 2011 conference that I am serving as the tutorial chair for;
6. busy working on a multiple investigator NSF proposal, and
7. trying to finish up two research papers on sustainable supply chain management and on electronic recycling with collaborators;
8. busy contacting all the INFORMS student chapter Faculty Advisors and Chapter Presidents that I am responsible for to see how their chapters were doing and the activities that they were planning for this semester, and
9. trying to catch up with the reviewing of a pile of papers;
10. taking out a senior colleague to lunch who is a distinguished teacher, since I wanted to document his pedagogical wisdom (will write about what I learned later on this blog), and
11. starting my reviews of proposals for a scientific foundation of another country (luckily, this country pays for this kind of hard work).
All of the above I somehow managed to do as our community was having a very hard time dealing with the sudden death of a terrific colleague.
And the above does not even mention any duties/activities as a wife and mother!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Wisdom of Crowds in Transportation Networks and the Braess Paradox
Is there a phenomenon of wisdom of crowds in transportation networks?
In the paper, "The Negation of the Braess Paradox as Demand Increases: The Wisdom of Crowds in Transportation Networks," just published in Europhysics Letters, volume 91, (2010), I establish that this is, indeed, the case.
Drivers act selfishly and independently in choosing their optimal routes of travel with no concern as to the effects of their choices on the effects of others or on congestion, which is known, in economics, as a negative externality. Such selfish behavior can lead to the infamous and counterintuitive phenomenon known as the Braess paradox in which the addition of a new road can actually increase the travel time for all! Hence, the removal of a road to traffic as has been done recently in Seoul, Korea and in NYC may actually improve the travel time.
Our research proves that even in networks in which the Braess paradox occurs that, at higher levels of demand, e.g., with more drivers on a transportation network, the new route will no longer be used, and, hence, the Braess paradox will be negated. This novel result suggests that there is a wisdom of crowds phenomenon taking place.
Since other networks, including the Internet and electric power generation and distribution networks, have features similar to that of congested urban transportation networks, this paper has important applications to the design of such networks, as well. Notably, it demonstrates that designers of critical infrastructure must capture the demands and the behavior of the users of the infrastructure in their designs since inappropriate designs may not only result in worse-off situations for all but, ultimately, in a lack of use of parts of the new infrastructure. Fascinatingly, it may also have applications to targeted cancer therapy.
These results are especially timely given the calls for increased investments in infrastructure in the US. Without appropriate planning, however, the so-called investments may actually be counterproductive. At the same time, our study demonstrates that 'if one builds, it does not mean that more will come!'
In the paper, "The Negation of the Braess Paradox as Demand Increases: The Wisdom of Crowds in Transportation Networks," just published in Europhysics Letters, volume 91, (2010), I establish that this is, indeed, the case.
Drivers act selfishly and independently in choosing their optimal routes of travel with no concern as to the effects of their choices on the effects of others or on congestion, which is known, in economics, as a negative externality. Such selfish behavior can lead to the infamous and counterintuitive phenomenon known as the Braess paradox in which the addition of a new road can actually increase the travel time for all! Hence, the removal of a road to traffic as has been done recently in Seoul, Korea and in NYC may actually improve the travel time.
Our research proves that even in networks in which the Braess paradox occurs that, at higher levels of demand, e.g., with more drivers on a transportation network, the new route will no longer be used, and, hence, the Braess paradox will be negated. This novel result suggests that there is a wisdom of crowds phenomenon taking place.
Since other networks, including the Internet and electric power generation and distribution networks, have features similar to that of congested urban transportation networks, this paper has important applications to the design of such networks, as well. Notably, it demonstrates that designers of critical infrastructure must capture the demands and the behavior of the users of the infrastructure in their designs since inappropriate designs may not only result in worse-off situations for all but, ultimately, in a lack of use of parts of the new infrastructure. Fascinatingly, it may also have applications to targeted cancer therapy.
These results are especially timely given the calls for increased investments in infrastructure in the US. Without appropriate planning, however, the so-called investments may actually be counterproductive. At the same time, our study demonstrates that 'if one builds, it does not mean that more will come!'
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Cybersleuthing or just Troubleshooting
This morning, one of the associates of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, who was working on a grant proposal, emailed me to inform me that he could not download pdf files from the Center's Website. I then emailed several other associates and received mixed responses. Notice that this is on a Sunday.
Since I could not recreate the problem on my computer, nor could my husband on his, nor could our daughter on hers (she uses a MAC rather than a PC), my husband turned to our travel computer, an old Toshiba. (I am risk-averse and, although it's backed up, I do not like to carry my laptop with all my work on it when I travel!) Lo and behold, when I tried to use Firefox to download an article from the center's website, it went into never-neverland.
After doing a quick web search, I found that this problem was mentioned more times than I care to know about and that there were more possible causes/solutions than I would care to decipher. The consensus, however, seemed to be that if Firefox uses its built-in pdf reader, there are certain pdf files that crash the reader giving a "stopped" message at the bottom. While sometimes hitting the back button and restarting would clear the problem (noted by one of my hard-working doctoral students who had figured this out last week), this approach would not always work.
Since many of my files are generated using the pdf generators in PCTeX and OpenOffice, I have no idea if there is a quirk between how those generate pdfs as compared to those generated by Adobe Acrobat.
The consensus solution (nothing like the wisdom of intelligent, geeky crowds), however, was to go to the tools menu of Firefox and, under options, change the program associated with pdf files to Adobe Reader. Changing this option cleared up the problem on my travel laptop, for the associate who originally contacted me this morning, and for several others!
On my usual computer and my husband's computer the association had already been changed which, I presume, is why we never saw the problem in the first place.
With computers, it may be several hours gone and only tiny steps forward. However, I managed to also get a neat code working today for an algorithm implementation for a network optimization model, and that was, in contrast, great fun and rewarding (but, then again, I had full control over that work and my progress)!
Since I could not recreate the problem on my computer, nor could my husband on his, nor could our daughter on hers (she uses a MAC rather than a PC), my husband turned to our travel computer, an old Toshiba. (I am risk-averse and, although it's backed up, I do not like to carry my laptop with all my work on it when I travel!) Lo and behold, when I tried to use Firefox to download an article from the center's website, it went into never-neverland.
After doing a quick web search, I found that this problem was mentioned more times than I care to know about and that there were more possible causes/solutions than I would care to decipher. The consensus, however, seemed to be that if Firefox uses its built-in pdf reader, there are certain pdf files that crash the reader giving a "stopped" message at the bottom. While sometimes hitting the back button and restarting would clear the problem (noted by one of my hard-working doctoral students who had figured this out last week), this approach would not always work.
Since many of my files are generated using the pdf generators in PCTeX and OpenOffice, I have no idea if there is a quirk between how those generate pdfs as compared to those generated by Adobe Acrobat.
The consensus solution (nothing like the wisdom of intelligent, geeky crowds), however, was to go to the tools menu of Firefox and, under options, change the program associated with pdf files to Adobe Reader. Changing this option cleared up the problem on my travel laptop, for the associate who originally contacted me this morning, and for several others!
On my usual computer and my husband's computer the association had already been changed which, I presume, is why we never saw the problem in the first place.
With computers, it may be several hours gone and only tiny steps forward. However, I managed to also get a neat code working today for an algorithm implementation for a network optimization model, and that was, in contrast, great fun and rewarding (but, then again, I had full control over that work and my progress)!
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