Wisdom of the crowds

The only definite way of gauging the will of the people is through an election.

The first time I heard the phrase was in relation to the concept discovered by Francis Galton in 1906. Galton, who was a cousin of the celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin, was observing a contest in an animal fair where the visitors were supposed to guess the exact weight of an ox. The results bewildered Galton as no single individual, including veterinary doctors, naturalists or cattle experts, could guess the ox’s exact weight, but the average of all the estimations was merely a pound over the animal’s actual weight. This was an analogy to a democracy where people from different backgrounds, skills and abilities get a vote, and all these votes together elect a leader who forms the government. He wrote that 'the average competitor was probably as well fitted for making a just estimate of the weight of the ox, as an average voter is of judging the merits of most political issues on which he votes'. After which he did realise the credibility of a democratic judgement system and admitted it to be trustworthy.