The Miracle of Aggregation and the Wisdom of Crowds

I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been the biggest fan of group work. Yet, a few weeks ago, I took an economics exam that proved to be an incredible testament to the power of group work. A few friends and I joined forces to study together over the three days that preceded the exam. When we first began studying, we each understood an alarmingly inadequate amount of the test material. Yet, by the end of the three days, we’d developed a strong comprehension of the material, and every one of us passed the exam with scores well above the class average. I considered the desperate condition in which we’d started, and the miracle it was that we actually performed well on the test. It reminded me of a miracle that I’d learned about in my Public Choice class: the miracle of aggregation.

In politics, the Miracle of Aggregation states that the votes of many uninformed voters will ultimately offset one another and the result of the election will be swayed by the informed voters, thus resulting in a socially preferred outcome. Much like how an ignorant voter would have been unlikely to choose the optimal outcome by themselves, if my friends and I had taken the test without having studied together, we likely would have failed. The miracle of aggregation is also considered a strong example of a phenomenon called the “Wisdom of Crowds,” which suggests that, collectively, large groups of people are smarter than individual experts. My friends and I were essentially able to build off of each other's ignorance in order to obtain a concrete and correct understanding of difficult economic concepts. And so, thanks to the miracle of aggregation and the wisdom of crowds, I performed well on a difficult exam, and can now say I’ve had a positive experience with group work.