The Composition of Optimally Wise Crowds

In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 12, Heft 3, S. 130-143

Abstract

We investigate optimal group member configurations for producing a maximally accurate group forecast. Our approach accounts for group members that may be biased in their forecasts and/or have errors that correlate with the criterion values being forecast. We show that for large forecasting groups, the diversity of individual forecasts linearly trades off with forecaster accuracy when determining optimal group composition.