The wisdom of crowds and the miracle of aggregation, arguably, are the reasons why markets and democracy work as well as they do. As New Yorker James Surowiecki explains in his new book, "consider the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When a contestant on the show is stumped by a question, he has a couple of choices in asking for help: the audience or someone he's designated as an expert. The experts do a reasonable job: They get the answer right 65% of the time. But the audience is close to perfect: It gets the answer right 91% of the time, even though it's made up of people who have nothing better to do than sit in a TV studio and watch Regis Philbin." The new, new tipping point?
posted by kliuless on May 25, 2004 - 25 comments

What goes up, must come down. After it's meteoric rise in the ratings, WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE's future is looking bleak. This comes after news that a British Millionaire contestant accused of cheating. <coff, coff!> Do you think maybe it was just all too crass in the post 9/11 world?
posted by crunchland on Nov 28, 2001 - 10 comments

Who Coughs to be a Millionaire? UK Army Major accused of using coughing code to win a Million quid. Lucky no one had a cold.
posted by oddity on Sep 21, 2001 - 5 comments

You loose, but it's not your fault. I wonder if a winter edition of monopoly will come out because of this.
posted by tiaka on Aug 21, 2001 - 18 comments