Yesterday I went to a baby shower. Guys, there is a reason you are not invited to these gathering, and you should count yourself lucky that you are excluded from the estrogen parties. We play games, oooh and aww over the ruffles and bows, eat and talk. However, one of the games particularly interested me this time. At every shower there is a guessing game played where the hostess takes a baby bottle and fills it with some sort of candy, and then the guests are asked to guess the correct number of candies inside; this shower had a sippy cup filled with jelly beans to guess at. We all put in our guesses and waited to see who had won the sippy cup. My mother actually won with a guess of 72--only 11 beans off of the correct number of 83--and won a bottle of bubble bath.
On a less girly topic, James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds is all about this exact game women have been playing for years! Women are always a step ahead. ; ) Surowiecki argues that if a crowd is asked a question, then their answers are averaged, the averaged answer will be closer to the correct answer than any of the individual answers. I decided to put this theory to the test, so I gathered all the ladies' guesses and pocketed them. Today I added up their guesses, divided by the number of guests and voila! The averaged answer was 74--only 9 beans off from the correct answer. Next time I am invited to a baby shower (hint, hint sisters!) I now have a fool proof way of cheating a win out of the Guessing Game thanks to James Surowiecki.
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