Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day

Apparently, crowds are fairly smart.

No, I'm not talking about the hordes of folks waiting outside of Wal*Mart at 2AM to pick up a $29 combination DVD player and Foreman Grill (Mom? Dad? Forget you read that.), i'm talking about the fact that given a general topic, the estimation produced from the average of the crowd tends to be more accurate than that of the individual person. Or something. I'm not really sure.

So I'm joining the crowd.

In this case, said crowd will be at the first Open TechDev mini-conference we're holding on the main campus. We're launching the series with a talk by New York Times columnist and originator of "The Wisdom of Crowds", James Surowiecki who will be talking about Prediction Markets.

Ok, so no, Beck won't be performing at this one, but if you're interested in finding out the surprising way that groups tend to think, it's worth attending. And it's free, and the place it's being held in has free soda fountains on the first floor and a weird video sculpture, and you might learn a thing or two.

Hope to see you there!

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