Does the crowd effect actually work?

1000 predictors to help you bet more accurately – all about the crowd effect in sports betting

If you look at recent events in US cities, when people staged pogroms and riots on the streets, it is hardly appropriate in this case to say that the crowd has a sober mind. But the crowd can have an excellent eye – it is enough just to direct your mental energy in a peaceful direction.

In 1906, the British anthropologist Francis Galton performed a well-known experiment at a country fair near Plymouth, where he lived. Although Galton had conducted similar studies before, it was only in 1906 that he was able to document everything for the first time.

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Francis was walking around the exhibition, where he liked the stand, near which a kind of competition was held – you had to guess the weight. A healthy bull was exhibited, and people began to guess the weight of the animal. The task was complicated by the fact that it was necessary to determine the weight of the bull after it was slaughtered and the carcass was divided. Almost 800 people volunteered to try their luck. Among them were farmers and butchers who are more versed in this, but most people are not professionals in this matter.

787 personalized tickets were filled, after which they were sorted in descending order of forecast accuracy. The collective wisdom of the crowd is shown in this graph:

The scientist calculated these figures and it turned out that individual miscalculations and errors in one direction or another ideally balanced each other. The opinion of the crowd was 1197 pounds of live weight, and the actual weight of the bull after cutting was 1198 pounds. The wisdom of the crowd – this is the name given to the accuracy of the collective forecast.

The wisdom of the crowd and sports betting

• Diversity. A crowd of Barcelona fans will give a more accurate prediction for the match than one individual fan. At the same time, the crowd of Barcelona fans will give a less accurate prediction for the match of their team than the general opinion of fans of different clubs.
• The size. 1000 people – this is exactly the number of opinions that scientists at the ETH in Zurich advise to take into account for good forecast accuracy. The more forecasters express their opinion, the more accurate the forecast will be.
• Independence. It is important that the forecaster does not know in advance the opinion of the crowd. That is, in sports betting, you must first analyze the event independently and only then look at the “wisdom of the crowd”.

How to conduct an analysis to determine the collective forecast?

In the case of Francis Galton, it took him a long time to calculate all the predictions and come up with an average. Then it was all done manually, since there were no other ways. In modern times, it is possible and necessary to apply an algorithm or a computing device for a collective forecast.If you want to know the collective prediction for a football match, you need multivariate, vector analysis.

The online voting system is the easiest and most affordable way. It is important that the system itself is reliable. That is, inaccessible to manipulation. It is easiest to implement a voting system in social networks – the functionality allows you to do this very quickly.

In The Wisdom of the Crowd, James Szuroviesky describes in detail the essence of collective opinion. However, even the most educated and successful crowd also tend to make mistakes. Sports betting is always a risk. But we love sports because it is unpredictable.