Diversity = Productivity

The NY Times interviews Scott Page:

What the model showed was that diverse groups of problem solvers outperformed the groups of the best individuals at solving problems. The reason: the diverse groups got stuck less often than the smart individuals, who tended to think similarly.

The other thing we did was to show in mathematical terms how when making predictions, a group’s errors depend in equal parts on the ability of its members to predict and their diversity. This second theorem can be expressed as an equation: collective accuracy = average accuracy + diversity.

A paradigm shift is well in the making. Seems like diversity matters a whole lot more than most people - and standard economic theory - would have guessed.

Comments

[Mike Linacre]

Thanks for posting this, Richard. In similar work in 1994, Prof. Ben Wright of U. Chicago derived that, in Page's terminology, "collective accuracy = average accuracy + logarithm (number of diverse approaches)"

[reawOraxarp]

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