Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen

This is a fun book. Not quite as information dense as The Wisdom of Crowds (Tyler Cowen references that work and cites a number of the same studies), it's more accessible to the non-economist.

One thing that I didn't like was that he saved all of the works cited for a section at the end of the book and did not include end or footnotes when citing other works. I hate when authors say, "studies have shown..." What study? When? Conducted by whom? Some studies are definitely more reliable than others.

I would definitely recommend this book, but would recommend The Wisdom of Crowds much more strongly.

Cheers.

When Science Goes Wrong: 12 Tales from the Dark Side of Discovery by Simon LeVay

2 Toots of the horn!

• 1 for having read a book covered on the Daily Show
• 2nd for having fought my way through this book

Pluses:

• Lots of science. Learn the lingo; talk the talk!
• Some interesting anecdotes: the volcanologists who walked into an erupting crater; the sociologists who experimented on orphans to make them stutter; the guy who convinced Congress that E was a dangerous drug (by killing monkeys with methamphetamine).
  

Minuses:

• The boring stories. I couldn't believe that his opening tale from the dark side was a BORING tale of a man getting Parkinson's disease and having experimental surgery that killed him. Admittedly, it killed him in a really gross, weird way, but still.
• Each blip could have been related in 5 pages instead of 40 or so. The author really dragged this out to make it a book, rather than just doing more research to come up with new anecdotes.

I would recommend a quick perusal of this book while standing/sitting in a cafe at Borders. I would not recommend buying it.

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

I disagree with the main premise of this text, and yet this is still the best book on organizational development and basic sociology that I have ever read! I absolutely loved this book and am very glad that I took the time to read it.

The first section of the book is devoted to the (relatively weak) theory that the collective wisdom of a group of average Joes acting independently will outperform the greatest experts. Hmm. The examples are things like guessing the weight of a steer, at a country fair in ye olde England where presumably all of the attendees were experts in the weight of steers; guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar; small decision markets that are extremely complicated to participate in (I've tried the Google one) and would thus only attract a certain type of participant, as they require a lot of time for no pay-off, or only a pay-off of intangibles, etc..

However, slogging through the unconvincing argument in favor of populism will bring you to the meat and potatoes of Organizational Development theory and to a treasure trove of marketing and sociology studies and historical anecdotes. For example, I had no idea that the Quakers are credited with creating the modern fixed-price system that capitalism rests on , as opposed to bargaining a different price with each customer. The book is a fantastic collection of multidisciplinary tidbits.

So, while I would still rather consult with an actual expert rather than with a group of people at a tailgate party, I would highly recommend this book - and it sure is a nice book to be seen with.
:)