By Esther Landhuis

At a 1906 county fair in England, some 800 villagers tried to estimate the weight of an ox. None of the contestants hit the mark, but a closer look at their guess cards led to a stunning discovery. Stacking the estimates from lowest to highest, the middlemost value came within 0.8 percent of the ox’s butchered weight—closer than individual guesses submitted by cattle experts. Published in 1907, these findings on the statistical concept of median were among the first to demonstrate the wisdom of crowds.

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