Nope, I've read "The Madness of Crowds" though which is pretty good too.

Reading the Amazon reviews, it looks like it's not so much crowds which are wise, rather specific collections of people:

"The four conditions that characterize wise crowds:

1. Diversity of opinion (each person should have some private information, even if its just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts)

2. Independence (people's opinions are not determined by the opinions of those around them)

3. Decentralization (people are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge)

4. Aggregation (some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.) "

Somehow, I don't think the crowds at the amusement park last weekend satisfy those conditions. I'll check it out when I go to B/N today.

I haven't read it, but I heard an interview with the author on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3806781

They used the crowd to guess the author's weight. I don't know if it was staged, but averaging everyone's answer was pretty much dead on.

Henry

No, but I guessed the number of jelly beans in the jar.

Surowiecki also seems to be one of those people that, now that I know who he is, his name seems to come up everywhere I look, usually in association with things I'm very intrigued by.

I found your journal through radiantsun. I read some of your previous entries, and I find your observations very interesting. I just added you, but wanted to make sure I introduced myself. Hello!

I haven't read this book, but I've heard very good things about it from a variety of sources. It's already on my list, but that doesn't mean much - I've got a long list. =)