How to improve group decision making
When it operates efficiently, a group’s decision making will nearly always outperform the ability of any one of its members working on their own. This is especially the case if the group is formed of diverse members. One problem: groups rarely work efficiently.
A new meta-analysis (pdf) of 72 studies, involving 4,795 groups and over 17,000 individuals has shown that groups tend to spend most of their time discussing the information shared by members, which is therefore redundant, rather than discussing information known only to one or a minority of members. This is important because those groups that do share unique information tend to make better decisions.
“What this suggests is that teams who talk more amongst themselves aren’t necessarily sharing useful information. Therefore, they’re not actually coming to a better result. Rather, it’s more important what the teams are talking about, than how much they are talking,” said Mesmer-Magnus.
WHAT MAKES US SEEK OUT FEAR?
Danger is booming—as a pastime. Are we crazy? Or just reacting against mollycoddling? Deirdre Fernand talks to risk-takers and academics …
There are young people whose sole ambition on leaving school seems to be to visit Queenstown, New Zealand, the self-styled adventure capital of the world. The land that gave us the bungee jump 20 years ago has a new attraction, the Nevis Arc, said to be the world’s highest flying trapeze. This giant swing sends its customers across a 120-metre gorge at a height of 153 metres. In Nepal, you will soon be able to parachute out of a plane at the height of Everest and land in the highest drop zone on earth. At £15,990 for 55 seconds, it will be no cheap thrill.
A Mintel survey of the adventure travel industry last April found that activity holidays had increased by 17.2% over four years, far more than the overall market (2.8%). Adrenaline holidays are moving from a niche market to a mainstream one: the tour operator Thomson has 20 dedicated brands serving 400,000 customers a year. Danger is an international industry.
Protect yourself – the storm is coming.
As I weep for the doctor who is being forced to chose between her faith and her job I can barely play my violin. You too can help these people – somehow – I’m not sure how but their lives are being ruined as they are forced to accept gay marriage – a plague worse than cancer of the brain. This is not mindless propaganda, that woman is a real doctor and I am in no way being sarcastic. Please help these sad people.
Thanks Katie.
Dead mayor re-elected by US town
Voters in a small town in the US state of Missouri have re-elected their popular mayor to a fourth term, several weeks after he died of a heart attack.
Harry Stonebraker died at the age of 69 in March – after ballot papers had been printed and absentee voting in the town of Winfield had begun.
Newswipe episode 3
If Charlie Brookers newswipe gets any better I might just have to bloody well buy a TV license (and a TV as well). For years I’ve shunned television due to it’s lack of quality content and had to suffer sitting in the houses of people I don’t really like all that much just to catch QI or yet another one of Derren Browns TV appearances.
During the show he covers all the crappy aspects of British news reporting from the normal old school BBC news to the down right glitzy over blown crap-show on Sky, before heading over to the US and tearing Bill-fking-O’Reilly a new one. At this point I wet my knickers and wept with joy.
The last 15 minutes of the show is one long Adam-Curtis-porn-fest which had me bouncing about in the chair like a horny schoolgirl I almost cried and shouted down the empty hallways “there is intelligent life out there!”.
But no one was in and so I felt alone and have turned to you our faithful readers to express myself and say “WATCH THIS!!!” as it may just be the last breath of common sense out there before we’re all swallowed up by the giant 7 headed dragon of stupidity, shallowness and spin.
Struggling US towns print their own currency
Communities across America are bypassing the dollar and creating their own currencies in an attempt to help both consumers and businesses struggling in the recession.
The idea, borrowed from the Depression era when the currencies were known as “scrip”, is designed to boost local spending and keep money circulating within the community.Around $2 million worth of BerkShares – the most established local currency – is circulating in the Berkshires, a rural area in southern Massachusetts.
The beautifully-illustrated notes portray local “heroes”, including the author Herman Melville, the artist Norman Rockwell and a tribe of Mohicans.
“It reformed the way many business owners and residents think about their local economy and helped educate the community on why shopping locally matters,” said Susan Witt, a member of the BerkShares board.
In Detroit, where unemployment stands at 22 per cent, three businessmen are distributing more than $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers for customers to spend in any of a dozen shops.
One in 20 £1 coins is fake, claims expert
The number of fake £1 coins in circulation is higher than previously thought, an industry expert said today. Royal Mint figures released in September last year suggested that 2 per cent of the coins – around 30 million in total – were fakes, but in January that figure was increased to 2.5 per cent.
But Andy Brown, managing director at Willings, a company which tests coins collected at car parks and in vending machines, said the machines used by the Royal Mint to test for fakes were not accurate enough.
He believes the figure could be closer to 5 per cent, meaning one in 20 coins are fake.
“The Mint has started a process of finding the fraudulent coins but the machines they use only find 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the fakes,” he said.
“They are using high-volume machines which are checking a lot of coins and they also do not want to reject real coins so they are potentially erring on the side of caution with their calculations.
“We carried out our own sample and withdrew £2,000 in pound coins from the bank and we found 3 per cent to 4 per cent were fakes.”
One way of spotting if a coin is a fake is to look at the edge. The lettering on a counterfeit coin is often indistinct or in the wrong typeface.
Another method is to hold the coin so the Queen’s head is upright. The pattern on the reverse side should also be upright.
Gary: Young, Psychic and Possessed
Twenty-year-old Gary Mannion calls himself Britain’s youngest psychic surgeon, channelling a spirit from the dead to operate on the sick. He is a rising star in the world of spiritual healing, travelling the world to bring his alleged ability to effect miracle cures to a devoted following.
In Young, Psychic and Possessed filmmaker Emeka Onono follows Gary as he tries to prove he really does have the power to heal. It is a journey into the supernatural that will challenge both sceptics and true believers. Emeka hears stories of miracle cures, watches Gary operate, and even participates in seances, before turning to science to try to separate fact from fantasy.
Teenagers are moody due to small brain growth
Teenagers are selfish, reckless and irritable because their brains develop slower than their bodies, scientists have claimed. Psychologists used to blame the unpleasant characteristics of adolescence on hormones. However, new brain imaging scans have revealed a high number of structural changes in teenagers and those in their early 20s.
Jay Giedd, at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, led the researchers who followed the progress of 400 children, scanning them every two years as they grew up. They found that adolescence brings waves of so-called ‘brain pruning’ during which children lose about one per cent of their grey matter every year until their early 20s. This reduction trims unused neural connections that were overproduced in the childhood growth spurt, starting with the more basic sensory and motor areas of the brain.
Telegraph (Thanks Katherine)
