As predictive analytics become more sophisticated, companies are increasingly relying on aggregated data to help them with everything from marketing to new product lines. But how much should firms trust the wisdom of the crowd? In his latest research, Wharton marketing professor John McCoy proposes a new solution for crowdsourcing that can help create better, more accurate results: Instead of going with the most popular answer to a question, choose the answer that is “surprisingly popular.” His paper, which was jointly written with Drazen Prelec and H. Sebastian Seung, is titled, “ A Solution to the Single-question Crowd Wisdom Problem ” and was published in Nature. He spoke to Knowledge at Wharton about why there’s plenty of wisdom in the crowd for those willing to ask the right questions. An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge at Wharton: The power of the crowd to make predictions or recommendations has gained wide acknowledgement in the past couple of years.…