The Dumb Agent Theory

Source: Wikipedia

USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was a nuclear submarine of the United States Navy lost at sea on June 5, 1968. While a public search did not yield any clues as to its location, Dr. John Craven, the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Navy's Special Projects Division, decided to employ the Bayesian search theory in order to establish its location. This involved formulating different hypotheses as to its location and using a probability distribution to combine the information and find the point of highest probability. The different hypotheses were taken from various independent sources, such as mathematicians, submarine specialists, and salvage men. The point Craven found ended up being 220 yards from the actual position of the sunken vessel. (Wikipedia)

Connected theory, see: The Wisdom of Crowds