Live crowd.
After seeing everyone else's guesses in the room, does the crowd become more accurate, or does it go wrong together?
Original study
- Galton, F. (1907). Vox populi. Nature, 75(1949), 450–451. Source
- Lorenz, J., Rauhut, H., Schweitzer, F., & Helbing, D. (2011). How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(22), 9020–9025. Source
- Becker, J., Brackbill, D., & Centola, D. (2017). Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(26), E5070–E5076. Source
- Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds. Doubleday. Source
- Kao, A. B., Berdahl, A. M., Hartnett, A. T., Lutz, M. J., Bak-Coleman, J. B., Ioannou, C. C., Giam, X., & Couzin, I. D. (2018). Counteracting estimation bias and social influence to improve the wisdom of crowds. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 15(141), 20180130. Source
Our adaptation
A live-room adaptation of Galton's (1907) wisdom of crowds and the social-influence design of Lorenz et al. (2011). When 20 people gather in a public room (3–200 in private rooms), three questions are asked, each in two rounds of 20 seconds. In round 1 everyone estimates without seeing others; in round 2 the distribution and median of the room's round-1 estimates are shown and the estimate can be updated. The true value is shown after round 2 closes.
Differences from the original study
- The jar drawn on screen has no depth.
- Points are imaginary.
- In small rooms the distribution shown in round 2 can be very noisy.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
group_id | group code | Room code: links rows from the same room; regenerated at random in every release. |
group_size | integer | Number of players in the room. |
points | number | Player's points. |
est | JSON | Estimates for the three questions: [[round 1, round 2] × 3] (null if not entered). |
err1 | number | Mean percentage deviation of the player's round-1 estimates from the true value. |
err2 | number | Mean percentage deviation of the player's round-2 estimates. |
crowd_err1 | number | Mean percentage deviation of the room's round-1 median estimate. |
crowd_err2 | number | Mean percentage deviation of the room's round-2 median estimate. |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
Answers to this experiment are never accepted from the browser; they are written on the server from the room's action records only when the room ends. Estimates outside the question's allowed range are rejected at input. If a player enters no new estimate in round 2, their round-1 estimate stands.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The crowd result is the crowd error in both rounds and how far estimates shift toward the crowd.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.