Lu Hong, Scott Page

Paper #: 98-08-077

In this paper, we construct a general model of diverse problem solvers of limited abilities. We use this model to derive two main results: (1) a collection of diverse, bounded problem solvers can locate optimal solutions to difficult problems and (2) a collection of problem solvers of diverse abilities tends to jointly outperform a collection of high-ability problem solvers, where a problem solver's ability equals her expected individual performance.

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