Tech Companies Draw on 'Wisdom of the Crowds' 131
An anonymous reader writes "News.com is carrying an article on a 'mini-conference' held at Yahoo's HQ this past Wednesday. The get-together put representatives from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and HP together to talk about their experiments with predictive networks. The 'wisdom of the crowds' allows these companies to make use of the collective knowledge their employees hold to answer important questions for the company." From the article: "David Pennock, a principal research scientist at Yahoo Research, said the company has created a currency called a Yootle. It's described as a 'scorekeeping system for favors owed.' Pennock offered as an example a programmer offering to write a piece of code for a few Yootles. Or, when organizing a dinner outing, one employee could use an internal SMS tool to bid 2 Yootles for Italian and 4 Yootles for Mexican. 'If you don't get to go to the restaurant you want to, you get compensation' in Yootles, he said. Related to Yootles is Yahoo Research's experiment with a fantasy prediction market for technology called the Tech Buzz Game. It's a modified version of software licensed from NewsFutures in conjunction with O'Reilly Media and features topics like Atlantic hurricanes and portable media devices. Winners are those who predict how popular a topic will be on Yahoo Search. "
I think this has a name (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I think this has a name (Score:5, Funny)
It's worse for/with me. (Score:2)
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Re:I think this has a name (Score:5, Interesting)
For a strategyproof scheme, check out the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism [wikipedia.org]. Basically, everyone gives weighted votes about something, and the winners of the tally pay a penalty equal to the imposition they caused the rest of the people. Only trouble is, this penalty has to be completely discarded to prevent hyjinx...
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- There will be five rounds.
- Each group has to choose a color (red or green)
- If every group votes green, everyone gets 100 points.
- If some groups vote green and some vote red, the green groups lose 100 points and the red groups gain 100 poi
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Thanks for this -- I was discussing your post with my friends last night -- we have a couple of questions, please!
* You say there were five rounds -- were the results announced at the end of each round? Did this affect the way people voted next time?
* Was it anonymous -- so if you voted red, no-one knew/ no-one would "punish" you? (However lightheartedly).
Thanks in advance for any light you can shed - and happy holidays...
Martin in London.
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Yes. With a big scoreboard on a blackboard or whiteboard, with a column for each group and a row for each round, and another table to keep score.
> Did this affect the way people voted next time?
I'm sure it did.
> Was it anonymous -- so if you voted red, no-one knew/ no-one would "punish" you? (However lightheartedly).
Stupid language--I'm not sure which 'you' you mean.
-
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Many thanks for this extremely clear and detailed summary, very much appreciated. My girlfriend had done a little game theory, and she pointed out that, as you say, it uses the same priniciple of gameplay as the prisoner's dilemma. However, the game you describe manages to turn these principles into a much more interesting actual game, and one that can be played by large numbers of people.
Thanks again for taking the trouble to write, and have a great Christmas and new year.
. all the best
. Mart
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What you mean is "If your choice doesn't win then you don't pay, if it wins then you pay whatever you bid".
Plain English.
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In other words, in the listed example, say you wanted Chinese. It's apparent that Chinese is going to win, so it's in your best interest to bid, say , 50p for Italian. In the end, you end up getting the Chinese dinner you wanted, and you managed to extract 50p for the privilege, rather than paying a small amount that you would if you had been honest in your desire to get Chinese.
Like many such sy
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Note that in this scheme you're not going to be able to lower your bid, so this is quite a likely outcome.
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If you know someone really wants option X, but you don't care either way, you can bid against option X, hoping that person will outbid you. Then you'll get money while eating at a place you liked anyway. It's really not much different from pumping the value of your buddy's item on ebay, or proper playing on 'Princes of Florence'
I bid $10 for "eat out of a dumpster". (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it is an extreme example, but it shows how you can "game" that system. Not a good idea.
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Your "vote" would be invalid. Do you really think that the other people in the system would pay you $10 to not eat out of a dumpster? The entire system is really set up around the assumption that participants have a legitimate interest in the result of the vote. Your "gaming the system" is just you not really having an interest in the result, so the assumptions are brok
Color me a tad cynical (Score:5, Funny)
Alex I'll take "most retarded use of the Internet for $1000".
It's amazing poeple could go out to lunch harmoniously for decades prior to this stunning reveleation.
No wonder Yahoo is not relevant these days.
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MS and the Zune player comes to mind. Gee what do people want in a portable music player?
Drag and drop. Cross platform compatibility. Compatibility with online music services (more than one). Simple easy sharing. Wi-Fi connectivity to eliminate cords and enable sharing would be nice. Small lightweight form.
They kinda hit on a couple features but overall missed the boat entirely.
Wi-Fi that won't connect to your home network? What a miss. No USB drive capabil
My system is better (Score:2)
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I am surprised it took this long... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I am surprised it took this long... (Score:5, Interesting)
You may also recall that a particularly bad round of reporting on some related work (wherein people in the defense/intel world were "gambling" futures on which head of state, for example, would next come under attack from within, etc) resulted in headlines like "Government Officials Place Assassination Bets." They actually had to shut that one down because the media idiots got enough people to make congress creatures uncomfortable. I hope they just moved the research out of the bright lights and kept it up, but it just goes to show you that these slightly odd-seeming areas of research can be wildly misinterpreted by people who get all of their interpretation in 10-second sound bites. Um, or slashdot summaries.
Re:I am surprised it took this long... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I was actually the lead engineer on this project, and it's completely gone (or at least as far as my company is concerned). The publicity led to a number of private sector prediction markets, but it turns out that most companies, while they are enthusiastic about trying them out, don't want to pay much money for implementation. Perhaps Google et al. will be able to show their value.
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Bummer. I can only imagine the number of quite cool projects that evaporate that way for one reason or another (and not always for a good reason!).
Asimov's Foundation series discussed this in 1950s (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Asimov's Foundation series discussed this in 19 (Score:1)
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Re:Asimov's Foundation series discussed this in 19 (Score:1)
"You can't predict what any one person will do." - Asimov
Actually, you can start to predict what any one person will do, and sometimes even what they will say, once you get to know that person. It's a hell of a thing, this "getting to know somebody". I guess Asimov never tried it.
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scorekeeping system for favors owed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe your sisters problem was that she didnt trust she would be compensated when there perhaps was no basis for that lack of trust. However, there is nothing 'selfish' about expecting and/or demanding compensation.
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You do get something. You get to live in an environment where the lives of the people you deal with have been made a little easier than they would have been, without your help. And that makes your own life a little easier.
Whether or not you call it "selfish" is not the point. The point is that, if you expect som
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For many people, thanks or a sense of satisfaction are often sufficient 'something in return'. It would be a pretty unpleasant an inefficient world if the majority expected or demanded some other reward for giving directions, holding a door open or allowing a car to pull in.
From the American Heritage Diction
Re:scorekeeping system for favors owed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Add this back:
It is entirely selfish of someone to expect others to perform labor/favors for them for nothing.
And the temperature of his life gets a lot warmer doesn't it?
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And even if we go with your interpretation that
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That's not my interpretation. The keyword here is "expect." My interpretation is that as a general rule, nobody should go around expecting others to do them favors - nothing about his willingness to do someone a favor.
You've assigned a whole self-focused meaning to his words that isn't necessarily there. Unless your goal is to portray him as "cold" it is much more reasonable to see it as a st
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In the case of siblings, though, the desire to do good for its own sake is generally trumped by the desire to one-up your sibling at every opportuni
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I totally agree with you. This "yootles" idea is hyper-lame, and doomed from the start. Ohh - some idiot wants to eat supper at Denny's, but instead he has to go to Burger Basket, so he gets compensated 5 yootles? Christ. Get over it, man. Just go eat at Burger Basket already. Seriously, if I have to offer some guy "yootles" to get him to eat a meal with me, I don't want to hang out with that jackass in the first place.
The only people using this crap will be dorks with overdeveloped senses of entitlement.
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Is the yogi not seeking to attain a level of spiritual enlightenment? Does he not believe that doing favors without asking for compensation is part of the path to enlightenment?
Seems to me that he is expecting to receive compensation then, just not directly from the person benefiting from the favor, but rather to lighten the load of his karma which is itself kind of a spiritual score-card.
Yootle domains: Get 'em while they're hot! (Score:3, Interesting)
That whois also reveals something else -- Yahoo! didn't get the
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Yahoo! isn't announcing a new online currency. You'd think that people would bother to read TFS (or TFA, but who am I kidding?) before posting something like that.
It's an internal currency used to represent favors owed. It's used to enhance collaboration, and to help resolve differences between people who lack the social skills, desire, or time t
Brilliant (Score:5, Funny)
"Yootles?" (Score:5, Funny)
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I bid 500 Quatloos... (Score:2)
Gaming the system (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, my point is...this is great, except human nature will always win out. The system only works if people participate. To get maximum participation, you need some sort of incentive. As soon as there's incentive, people will figure out a way to game the system.
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This looks like a prisoner's dilemma. Iterative prisoners dilemmas force such behavior to stop.
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'Gaming' food ordering example: The group used to order a bunch of pizzas, then there was a typical college 'food frenzy' of consuming slices 'til all the pizza was gone. If you didn't eat quick, you didn't get as much pizza. Unless...
A friend of mine and I would make sure there was an anchovy pizza in the order. We didn't like anchovies per se, but unlike the rest of the group, we didn't hate 'em.
So the pizzas
Yootle is a lame name (Score:5, Funny)
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More info on prediction markets (Score:5, Informative)
* Tradesports, a real-money prediction market on political and news events. The 2008 president market [tradesports.com] currently gives a Democratic a 50% probability of winning the White House in 2008, Hillary Clinton a 55% probability of getting the Democratic nomination, and John McCain a 49% probability of getting the Republican nomination.
* Futarchy [gmu.edu], a system of government semi-seriously proposed by Robin Hanson which would use prediction markets as a means of government decision-making. People would vote on values, and use a prediction market to determine the optimal government policies to achieve those values, which would help get around some of the godawful stupid things democracies tend to do.
* Storage Markets [storagemarkets.com], a real-money (but limited access?) market on the computer storage industry
* The Policy Analysis Market [wikipedia.org], a proposed prediction market for policies in the Middle East. It was IMHO a great idea, and could have potentially prevented some of the stupid decisions which have been made in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the government ended the project after it was the media (including slashdot [slashdot.org]) had a knee-jerk reaction to it and demonized it. The funny thing is, after the project was cancelled and the media learned more about it, coverage of the project became much more positive.
Foresight Exchange (Score:2)
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I predict this story will be.. (Score:1)
Wisdom of The Crowds (Score:4, Insightful)
The companies mentioned have some very smart people working for them. It's a shame the PHB's pretty much kill whatever innovation is happening in the belly of those beasts.
The wisdom of the crowds is frequently spoiled by individuals that game the system. Microsoft astroturfers on
The end result is the wisdom a crowd was supposed to provide essentially evaporates.
Yootles? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, maybe it's a little bit interesting, but seriously folks..
-6d
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Your failure to see the wisdom does not mean there is no wisdom present. See other posters for a history of the term (hint: it's Y + utils).
In essence, yootles are a way for Yahoo! employees to communicate to others how important something is to them.
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For the record (my economics is a bit rusty), AFAIK a util represents the value or utility of the item to me, and that is not tied to money. However, the saying "put your money where your mouth is" is something that stands out to
You don't like Yootles? (Score:2)
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SixD
It's pretty clear... (Score:4, Funny)
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This was in lieu of paychecks.
I was out of there by nightfall.
Wisdom of the crowds = part of the long tail? (Score:5, Interesting)
This Yootle system is interesting, but it doesn't go far enough. Just because the crowds skew towards a majority opinion doesn't mean that opinion is relevant to the majority (I know it sounds weird). Each individual will have certain likes and dislikes within that majority opinion. Without some sort of relevancy predictor, the "majority vote" is useless.
Hopefully we will see more people utilizing systems such as CRITEO's to actually take the input of the masses (thousands, millions, or even billions of decisions and ratings) and run them through a real-time engine to give everyone a unique view of what they might want/need/like/hate/etc. As I spent more time beating on trying to come up with my own quick/real-time solution, the more I realized that using someone else's services let me focus on what is best for my customer -- my content, generally.
The prediction system to rank Yahoo searches is very 2005 -- it really just capitalizes on the likes of the masses, which means it is hitting the top head of the long tail rather than the more important remaining 80%. I'd love to see a search engine that allows you to "rate" your search results or even individual search results in real time, maybe in collaboration with a system like CRITEO. Anyone interested in working on one? I'd be willing to bet that such an investment of time would give many of us a better search engine that actually returns results that are relevant to the individual's tastes rather than the masses' collective "favorites" which are usually way off base. It would also reduce the spam results greatly and open the door to the wisdom of the masses actually making a difference for each individual. What I like about collaborative filter is that 5 seconds per user can mean days or weeks saved for that user in the long run because of the 5 seconds "donated" by the million others.
Foresight Exchange (Score:1)
Wisdom (Score:3, Insightful)
Beware: there's another phrase (Score:3, Insightful)
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http://www.litrix.com/madraven/madne001.htm [litrix.com]
"Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds"
By Charles MacKay
1841
See also dot bomb.
Yahoo Yootle... (Score:3, Funny)
Wisdom (Score:1)
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Not a new concept, but loads of new applications (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot and Digg [digg.com] got a lot of attention as news filters, but these things are now being used everywhere. Trusted Places [trustedplaces.com] for restaurant reviews, Crowdstorm [crowdstorm.com] for shopping recommendations, wine sites, health sites, etc., etc. I can't wait to see where this is all headed. What's the next logical step?
The next logical step (Score:2)
You have to remember that for every person with an IQ above average, there's one with an IQ below average. That democracy doesn't take this into account is it's largest failing.
Next: Search Engines (Score:3, Interesting)
Search engines. Google's PageRank algorithm may point to highly rated *websites*, but searches themselves can be rated. Since most queries are less than 3 words, track where all less-than-3-word-queries go to, and rate *those* sites higher. Since humans are doing the searching, they will automatically tend to NOT go to splogs (based on their evaluations of the snippets that Google returns), thus dropping splog ratings while raising the ratings of legitimate sites: this is t
I can't be the only one (Score:3, Interesting)
Take for example the restaurant example. I may not be too bothered which one of those two we go to, but if I do choose the most vile restaurant I can think of and make that my choice, then I'll still get to eat where the most yootles wanted to go, but I get given Yootles as well.
This works for a while, until more people twig and junk on the bandwaggon - eventually nobody'll come out with a net-yootle amount - and you'll all end up eating in the foul restaurant.
Also... (Score:2)
Was Dr. Seuss the keynote speaker?
Wisdom of the Crowds? (Score:2, Funny)
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Microsoft believes in community efforts? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Although, they've done this many times before. Take part of something well respected and has community involvement (Java, etc) and then consume their efforts later. I'd be very careful what I share with Microsoft. Not because I don't like them, but because of a very long track record.
Other than that little ti
"Bidding" system is kindof silly (Score:1)
Wisdom in signatures (Score:2)
I prefer Quatloos (Score:1)
Crowds do not possess wisdom... (Score:2)
An humble suggestion... (Score:1)
-Loyal
Hmmm (Score:1)
What's the value of a yootle? (Score:2)
Anyway, who destroys the yootles? If you keep creating them but they're never destroyed, they'll become worthless very quickly indeed. The yootle inflation will be huge.
Whuffie (Score:4, Informative)
Wisdom of Crowds (Score:5, Funny)
Predictive networks and markets reflect consensus (Score:2)
Predictive networks and markets may reflect the "wisdom of crowds", but this "wisdom" is just the current consensus view. There are times when the consensus view is very wrong, even when it comes to predicting what masses of people will do.
For some time leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections in the United States I followed the Intrade and Iowa Electronic markets which were real money futures markets for, among other things, the US House and Senate races. The idea is that because these markets attrac
Yootles? (Score:2)
What's Whuffie you ask? Well, click the link, and if it sounds interesting, go here [craphound.com] and download the book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. (it's free)
Yootle Compensation Fairness Critical (Score:3, Interesting)
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