The wisdom of Crowds, Industry pricing and Quoting

[RobArb]

Don't know if any of you have heard about "Crowd Wisdom" but i think its fascinating.

 

Basically its the combined aggregate information of a number of people, tends to give accurate results in terms of the real estimate.

 

For example, if we take a jar full of sweets and ask 100 people to guess how many sweets are in that jar, the 100 guesses totalled and averaged are normally exact, to within a couple of sweets!

 

This only works when the information from other peoples guesses is kept secret, i think studies have proven that if current guesses are shown to the guesser's, the total far exceeds the actual number of sweets in the jar...

 

anyway, i'll stop rambling as it got me thinking.. what is the true value of tree jobs within our industry, and i don't mean a generic value because every job is different and incurs different costs for one thing and another, but... We could find out the true value for one specific job and build up a database of information.

 

If we took one job, lets say a largish Beech in a back garden, not directly fellable, but a decent dropzone, a day climbing and dismantlling, half a day shifting timber, drag of about 40ft from tree to chipper. I know there are a lot of variables because everybody works differently but say as a customer/client we got 100 arb's (not really possible logistically though) to quote for this one job and then averaged the quotes, would we get a true value of what that job is worth doing for?

 

Could this be applied elsewhere in arb?

 

Or am i just going on a mad monday afternoon ramble coz the sun is out?

[sloth]

 

Or am i just going on a mad monday afternoon ramble coz the sun is out?

 

Um, maybe!

[Rob D]

Could this be applied elsewhere in arb?

 

Or am i just going on a mad monday afternoon ramble coz the sun is out?

 

 

Ha ha - yes I think you may well be! - it's a good idea but with the flaw you've already pointed out - each subsequent job would be different!

 

 

[skyhuck]

The thing is there is an actual number of sweets in the jar, however there is not an actual correct price any job.

 

I normally have the price I would like and the lowest price I would be prepared to do it for

I generally end up somewhere between the two.

[RobArb]

Fair enough, was only a passing thought in todays heat:biggrin:

 

Would be a fascinating experiment to find out the value of one specific job from the dozens of minds of arbs:thumbup:

 

Sent from my Galaxy S2

[Stereo]

The madness of crowds obviously relates most relevantly to people's behavoir around money. Many think that a totally contrarian approach is best. This is not true. The crowd will be sort of right but not totally. You want to be 10-20% off the crowd so you can run with them but not go against them.

[Dean O]

i think studies have proven that if current guesses are shown to the guesser's, the total far exceeds the actual number of sweets in the jar...

 

ahh so this is why I'm always trying to work for the most number of sweets!