How bots can help vet the 'wisdom of the crowd' for bias

The classic example of "crowd wisdom" dates back to 1906, when Sir Francis Galton observed a contest in which attendees were asked to guess the weight of an ox at a country fair in England. In what many consider to be the first experiment on crowd wisdom, the average of the 800 guesses was within one pound of being correct. Consider that these kinds of experiments can now be done digitally – across cultures and time zones and fairly instantaneously. The classic experiment was reenacted recently with a digital crowd when a photo of a cow was posted online and viewers were invited to guess her weight. More than 17,000 votes were cast and the average guess was within 5 percent of being accurate.