Wisdom of the crowd at work

This weekend, I was at a sailing regatta, and I noticed the theory of wisdom of the crowd at work. In a sailing race, certain sides of the race course are more favorable to go to than others. However, it is not an easy task predicting which, but there are a few signs which expert sailors will notice. Moreover, in a sailboat race, it is difficult to pass anyone, unless you choose to go to the opposite side from them. Unfortunately, this weekend if you were behind and chose to go the opposite side of the race course, you often found yourself well behind the leaders. This is due to the wisdom of the crowd, or in this case "fleet." It may be obvious thinking about it, but given that I was sailing in a national championship, it is unlikely that putting a group of the best sailors in the country will yield anything but correct decision making. It was proven over and over to me this weekend that the crowd, or "fleet" as it is called in a sailing race, was always right. The best you can do if you are behind is to stay close and hope to pass with a little luck. It was nearly useless questioning the decision making of the fleet.

I was at the same regatta this past weekend and noticed another application of social networks at work--an information cascade. So at the start of a sailboat race all of the boats line up on an imajinary line between a boat displaying a flag and mark in the water and at go all of the boats power up and sail around the course-- it is the competators responsability to make sure they are on the line, but not over. If a boat is over they need to turn around and re-start the race. Starting gets challanging when there are lots of boats on the line and everyone is battling for the perfect start--a situation like this past weekend where multiple all-americans are racing. As such, each boat is trying to be in front of their competition, while not being over the line. However, once one boat becomes over the line all of the other boats generally see that they are no longer in front and work up untill they are even with the leader. Unfortunatly, if the leader is actually over the line, the information cascading down the fleet causes the other boats to be over the line as well. This past weekend featured many re-starts and most were thanks to one boat who managed to draw the entire fleet over early with it.