Subject:
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Re: Why sets receive a ZERO?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Tue, 19 Nov 2002 00:11:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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583 times
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> I only rate sets that I have built, and tend to buy only sets that I know
> I'll like. So, most of my ratings are 70-100. If a system like this is
> implemented, does this mean I'll have to poorly rate some sets that I don't
> own if I want the sets I have rated highly to retain the full grade that I
> think they deserve?
The whole point of the statistics is to moderate people's over-enthusiasm, so
therefore, the system should not allow sets to "retain the full grade that *I*
think they deserve".
Assuming you are rating all the sets (and not just your favourites), then by
the very meaning of the word "average", some must be above average and some
must be below average in terms of your personal experiences with some subset of
Lego's products. It is not meaningful for you to say "based on all the Lego
sets which I have experience, that they are all above average" as ratings
70-100 would suggest. Below average does not mean "bad".
I agree that each of us is self-selecting in terms of the sets with which we
acquire experience. An obvious example of this is preference for certain
themes. However, if everyone rated all the sets with which they had experience,
then the fact that not all of us rate all sets should not matter. So long as
there are a sufficiently large number of ratings of a particular set, the
statistical adjustments I have described tell us what we really need to know
... the general impression of people who bothered to buy/build this set in the
first place.
To take a concrete example, I am not a big fan of Bionicles. I do not buy them
and consequently do not rate them. If I was forced to rate them, I would put
them all close to 0. However, it is undeniable that many people do buy them,
and presumably have some view on which Bionicles are better than others. So if
a particular Bionicle set gets an average rating of 90 from those who bother to
buy/build the wretched things, I think we can safely conclude its one of the
best Bionicle sets. I doubt that a Pirates fan is likely to say, hey that
Bionicle at rating 90 is a better set than the Black Seas Barracuda which rated
at say 89, and then buy the Bionicle rather than the BSB. However, if a Pirates
fan says to themselves, "gee, those Bionicles seem pretty popular, maybe I
should give them a go", then it is presumably useful to know which are the
better Bionicles and which are the duds, or to discover that Roboriders
generally outrate Bionicles and maybe they'd be better to try a Roborider if
they want to try something of that general genre.
To some extent, when one is gathering statistics, it is useful at the outset to
know what questions people are trying to answer. If the question is "what is
the all-time best Lego set?", then frankly it's a dumb question as clearly
people's preferences are strongly influenced along theme lines, as we saw in
the recent Lego Legends poll, where some people voted for the Battrax, not
because they necessarily loved it, but because it was the only space set and
there needed to be a Space Legend, meanwhile others complained that the castle
vote was split by the presence of 2 castles etc.
What is a more reasonable question to hope to answer is "given some sets that I
think might be meaningfully compared against one another, how do they
compare?". It is then up to people to decide if it is meaningful for them to
compare a Roborider with a Bionicle, a Castle set with a Harry Potter set, a
large Pirate set with a small Pirate set, etc etc. If it is completely obvious
to you that you would love/hate a particular set because of something obvious
like its theme, there's not a lot of point looking at the ratings.
Kerry
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Why sets receive a ZERO?
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| (...) This is off-topic, but I really like the sound of your system. Here in Canada, we don't have standardised testing (like the SATs in the US) or any sort of grade balancing like this. Grade inflation is rampant. (...) I only rate sets that I (...) (22 years ago, 18-Nov-02, to lugnet.general)
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