Three representative examples of the collective dynamics observed in the computer simulations.

<p>For each example, the initial opinion map is shown on the left-hand side (experimental data), and the final opinion map after <i>N</i> = 300 rounds of simulations on the right-hand side. The opinion maps represent the proportion of individuals with a given opinion (<i>x</i>-axis) and a given confidence level (<i>y</i>-axis). As in Fig. 1, the normalized opinion is the actual opinion divided by the true value. The correct answer is represented by the red dashed lines (corresponding to a value of 1). Outliers with normalized opinion greater than 2 are not shown. The arrow maps represent the average movements over both opinion and confidence dimensions during simulations. Examples 1, 2, and 3 correspond to the questions “<i>What is the length of the river Oder in kilometers?</i> ”, “<i>How many inhabitants has the East Frisian island Wangerooge?</i>”, and “<i>How many gold medals were awarded during the Olympics in China in 2008?</i>”, respectively. The final convergence point may be determined by a dense cluster of low confidence individuals, as illustrated by Example 2 (<i>majority effect</i>), or by a few very confident individuals as in Example 3 (<i>expert effect</i>).