Information Aggregation: The Wisdom of Crowds

So I've been reviewing some modern economics in the past week, and remembered a topic I covered extensively in the fall. It's a theory called the wisdom of crowds. If you didn't guess by the name, the theory states that if you take information from a lot of people and put it together, everyone's bad information will cancel out (with a large enough group) and you'll be left only with good information. Thus, crowds are smarter than any of their individual members. I can get into the details of this theory later, if anyone is interested.

I've juxtaposed this concept with the stuff I've been reading about man being in the Information Age. We face the problem of a crowd so large, with so much information, that there's no way to add up what everyone is saying. What I want to discuss, reader, is how you can take the ridiculous amount of information available in the fantasy blogosphere, and filter it down to what's truly useful for you.

First, I encourage you to visit many blogs each day. I do my best to check everything in our blogroll on a daily basis, because each individual is picking out different trends to spot and players to discuss. Taking information from each of these sites, each of whom might give me a slightly different outlook for David Ortiz for the rest of 2008, gives me a sound basis for deciding whether or not I need to move Ortiz for a low price today.

Second, I advise you to cross-reference things from the large fantasy sites. For example, take Brandon Funston's Big Board. As much as I love Funston, who is a very talented fantasy analyst, he has a tendency to fall in love with certain players (Howie Kendrick, Nick Markakis) and give them too much respect, to the detriment of more deserving candidates. Cross his top 50 with, say, the first 50 of Sportsline's top 300, and the guys appearing on both lists are the true cream of the fantasy crop. This is most useful in March, when you're drafting and you have a thousand different players you could take with each pick.

Finally, I want to put in a soul-less plug. Please comment on the things you read! People learn more from a two-way conversation than they ever can from a one-way lecture or reading. I learn from your comments as much as you learn from my articles sometimes! So comment on the blogs you read. Go to fantasy message boards if you're not sure whether you need to sell on Nate McLouth. If you've having a problem, I guarantee that there are other fantasy players out there facing the same dilemma. 

This post is getting a little long, but I'd like to summarize things quickly. A group of people is consistently going to be smarter than any individual. The fantasy baseball community is a large group of people, and I'm just reminding you to do everything you can to get information from a lot of these people. Read a lot, check your sources, and most importantly, comment! Let everyone else take as much from you as you take from them.