Student: Ngo, Thuan Van Report 7

Q7. (a) Are there any possibilities of taking advantage of group intelligence by other than simple
majority voting?
(b) What is a benefit and limitation of group performance experiments in chess?
Answer:
(a) In real life, using majority voting to consult the knowledge of an intelligent group is always the

best method in many situations such as asking audiences in a live show for answers, electing the
president for a country, deciding a policy in a congress and so on. Perhaps, in a chess game it also
conforms this common methodology. If we keep using majority voting, we should concern about
how to use it fairly and effectively. In specifically, it contains the variety of strength and weakness
among players in the group. We may capture inappropriately the final decision from them when
considering the value of each vote as equivalent effect. Therefore, we should give different weights
for different voters. In addition to majority voting, to take advantage of group intelligence priorytask assigning for intelligences i.e. a plan to use a specific intelligence to deal with a particular section
in the game may also shows its benefits in anyway. In terms of applicable aspects, this planning
method in a chess game requires some great efforts to resolve the problems related to assignment.
For instances, planners should be careful in determining the multi-skilled players (or intelligences),
measuring skill-level of players, and choosing an optimal sequence of players to take moves in the
game. In short, it could be expected that this extended method may lead to potential sophistication
in preparing a plan, but might take full advantage of the power of every intelligence.
(b) Lately, group performance experiments in chess are proved to have benefits outperforming its
limitation in case of the homogeneous-group type. It is indicated that winning rate for a game
increases with group size. Therefore, in generally, the experiments proved the important role of large
size of group intelligence in a chess game as well as made a stronger support for the idiom Three
heads are better than one head. If it had a limitation, it could be only some restrictions on
conditions of setting experiments such as: lacking of studies with heterogeneous-group type, limiting
in scope of inspection (only size is considered now), and lacking the variety in decision making.
However, researchers could overcome all of those limits in their future works.
References:
1. Lecture Note: Consensus Building - Professor Dr. Hiroyuki Iida JAIST-IS.
2. Multi-Project Management with a Multi-Skilled Workforce: A Quantitative Approach Aiming at
Small Project Teams - Matthias Walter.
3. Smarter Task Assignment or Greater Effort: the impact of incentives on team performance by
Simon Burgess, Carol Propper, Marisa Ratto, Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder, and Emma
Tominey.
4. Group decision making and problem solving by Charles T. Schmidt
5. Effective Decision Making in Teams
6. Using teamwork to build a better workplace: A Chartered Management Institute case study
7. Homogeneous Group Performance in Chess by Kristian Spoerer, Thanatchai Sirivichayakul,
Hiroyuki Iida