The weight of an ox

[K-Dog]

One day in the fall of 1906, the British scientist Francis Galton headed for the country fair.

As he walked through the exhibition that day, Galton came across a weight-judging competition. A fat ox had been selected and members of a gathering crowd were lining up to place wagers on the (slaughtered and dressed) weight of the ox.

Eight hundred people tried their luck. They were a diverse lot. Many of them were butchers and farmers, but there were also quite a few who had no insider knowledge of cattle. 'Many non-experts competed,' Galton wrote later in the scientific journal Nature, 'like those clerks and others who have no expert knowledge of horse, but who bet on races, guided by newspapers, friends, and their own fancies.' The analogy to a democracy, in which people of radically different abilities and interests each get one vote, had suggested itself to Galton immediately. 'The average competitor was probably as well fitted for making a just estimate of the dressed weight of the ox, as an average voter is of judging the merits of most political issues on which he votes,' he wrote.

Galton was interested in figuring out what the 'average voter' was capable of because he wanted to prove that the average voter was capable of very little. So he turned the competition into an impromptu experiment. When the contest was over and the prizes had been awarded, Galton borrowed the tickets from the organizers and ran a series of statistical tests on them, including the mean of the group's guesses.

Galton undoubtedly thought that the average guess of the group would be way off the mark. After all, mix a few very smart people with some mediocre people and a lot of dumb people, and it seems like you'd end up with a dumb answer. But Galton was wrong — the crowd guessed 1,197 pounds, after it had been slaughtered and dressed the ox weighed 1,198 pounds. In other words, the crowd's judgment was essentially perfect.... Galton wrote later: 'The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected.' That was, to say the least, an understatement.

Seven percent unemployment in six months.  Consumer confidence is equivalent to guessing the weight of an ox.

Here you see where a coke can full of virus (if that) crashed the consumer cargo cult.  You can see the subsequent recovery. The end of the recovery shows this years falling confidence.  Gas prices will be kept low until the election passes.  What then?

Did I pick and choose, yes.  Do I think this is dishonest?  No, not in this case.  In general the American economic spin is always positive.  Truth is hard to find.  We are lied to every day.  Did I find some truth?

I do not know.

Is the precariat tapped out?

[TDoS]

Galton undoubtedly thought that the average guess of the group would be way off the mark. After all, mix a few very smart people with some mediocre people and a lot of dumb people, and it seems like you'd end up with a dumb answer. But Galton was wrong — the crowd guessed 1,197 pounds, after it had been slaughtered and dressed the ox weighed 1,198 pounds. In other words, the crowd's judgment was essentially perfect.... Galton wrote later: 'The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected.' That was, to say the least, an understatement.

Two points. One, the crowds estimate wasn't nearly perfect, only one common central metric of a given distribution was.The average. A common statisticians story about averages, the "average" American has one breast and one testicle. Now...how many average Americans might you find?

Second, the cow estimates were of an unknown, but ultimately absolute and known empirical value. Just get a scale. How tall is person X? How far away is England from NYC? Applying the idea of value of a group's estimate of an empirical value to that of the trustworthiness of a democratic judgement? Not the same thing. At its core...we are talking about a popularity contest. Like we did in high school...for the homecoming king and queen.

There is no empirical quantity of goodness or badness in democratic judgement. There is popularity, feelings, motivated self interest, and just good ol' self deception. Oh..sure...someone will vote for someone because they claim to be a "good" person. You know, like all the fine upstanding white christian nationalists who support convicted sexual predators and felons in democratic representations....those being the kind of people that represent what they CLAIM they support...good Christian values...just ignore the felony convictions part. Makes perfect sense. But it isn't within a country mile of an empirical value.

As for employment in the future? Seems reasonable empirical. Depends on how one views the value of economics of course, it is a social science, and not a natural or physical one for a reason. It is based on herd think...my favorite economic speech ever, typical PhD in economics, and a masters in statistics, and within the first 20 words his caveat for his upcoming solution he was going to reveal after 15 minutes of talking, was "now, with the underlying assumption that we are dealing with rational actors...".

Gotta love that one. This example comes from the last century, and I've never forgotten how I damn near burst into laughing on the spot.

[RE]

My first question with this story is whether it's true or just a made up tale to validate democracy.  Second, I'd like to see how repeatable this is.  As a scientist after getting a result like that which is totally unexpected, I would think he would do a few more trials.

Even if it's valid picking the correct weight of a cow is nothing like picking the right candidate in an election. Weight is an absolute number and the only variable.  Political choices are subjective with many issues involved, along with personalities.  There is also advertising and campaigning involved.

What I find interesting is how close elections always seem to be.  It's rare they get past the 5-/4- range.  Which means most elections are determined by a relatively small number of swing voters.

RE

[K-Dog]

I don't make much of the accuracy of the result.  Errors have to cancel each other out.  Physics that distribute errors around a central value are limited to specific scenarios.

Vulgar economics is group think, deception, and ass kissing.  True that.  When a vulgar economist looks at his reflection in a mirror he/she can't see anything.

Real economics says the next 'recession' is going to happen because boom and bust is built into the system dynamics of our economic system.  Now it is time for a bust.  It is in the cards.

There are a lot of events happening now which could trigger a rather long emergency.

Place your bets.  The dice are rolling.

We have a bull in the China shop.  A gambler with  . 

Asking 500 people when shit hits the fan and averaging the result would be interesting.  But we have to do the asking at a fair. 

[TDoS]

I don't make much of the accuracy of the result.  Errors have to cancel each other out.

Depends on the system you are talking about. Certainly when doing any probabilistic analysis you can find where the errors are because they don't cancel themselves out, and the probability spike they cause at certain values point out where those errors are.

Check out a bathtub distribution of single point failures for automobiles...it is really weird...because the errors, if you let them cancel out, would force you to a central tendency conclusion. Which is in fact the exact opposite of the truth.

Vulgar economics is group think, deception, and ass kissing.  True that.

Sure...but as anyone who has worked with top level economists, there are things within their specialty worth knowing. How can any polymath dismiss perspectives without honestly considering them fully? I'm not talking the kind of economic amateur hour blowhards you find online or putting together substacks, but top flight on both sides of the social science, the mathematically inclined, and the more story telling side of the profession.

Playing one off against the other is fascinating, one is more like reservoir engineers or mathematicians, the other who story telling and weaving together many disparate parts into a greater hole. The funny things is when you model the folks using words, and show them that when that of their 8 woven together stories each only have a 0.45 chance of probability that the chance of occurence of the entire story is 0.45^8= 1/1000 chance of happening. Needless to say, the storytellers don't like having their stories quantified.

Real economics says the next 'recession' is going to happen because boom and bust is built into the system dynamics of our economic system.  Now it is time for a bust.  It is in the cards.

Real econmics is herd think. The mathematical side hopes it is system dynamics, the story tellers presume their story has system dynamics behind it, the instant your science has to claim to be based on "rational actors" the seriousness of it just turns into a giggle fest.

There are a lot of events happening now which could trigger a rather long emergency.

Sure. Been waiting for it since the world was headed into the next ice age. Then the Great Dieoff. Accompanied now with global warming. And the world running out of oil by the end of the 1980's. Followed immediately by Colin Campbell declaring global peak oil in 1990. When it had already occurred in 1979, but Colin didn't notice!. Geologists. And then the internet was invented and every closet doomer jumped into manufacturing their favorite end of the world claims. Mayan calendar was always a good one. Planet X!

And so here we are...personal doom is still the highest probability of getting us before any long emergency (Kuntsler being one of those previously mentioned doomers)  that takes away the wealth of American communists, kills off fully dependent wards of the state, or normal folks just trying to get by. With some soting and ordering, I got 3 cars and 2 motorcyces into the garage yesterday! Now I have to figure out what to do with the other ones still in the driveway. One accomplishment at a time in a continuing age of doom!

Place your bets.  The dice are rolling.

...just as they have been since before we were born....long live Apocalypticism! Been here before we were born...will be here after.....

[Goldernen Oxernen]

We need to know if guesses were made publicly or secretly. I suspect they were not and when people like cattle auctioneers, who would be experienced and expert step up and give a guesstimate, average punters treat it as a tip. We saw this principal with Sean Penn presenting Mr Zelensky at the Oscars, influencing us to conflate him with Ms Lewinsky in the oval office

[TDoS]

We need to know if guesses were made publicly or secretly. I suspect they were not and when people like cattle auctioneers, who would be experienced and expert step up and give a guesstimate, average punters treat it as a tip.

Excellent point. Doing this is referred to as "blind sampling" in statistics, and is designed to offset the bias just as you've pointed out.