a couple of problems..... - Progressive Rock Music Forum

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Ady Cardiac View Drop Down

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Joined: December 29 2012
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Topic: a couple of problems.....
Posted: May 17 2013 at 10:42

hi ....sometimes i seem to get a mesage saying i can't post in certain blogs......that me first question.....secondly i can't seem to find a Cardiacs Band thing in the Forum on here.....if there is so can someone let me know......hope this was the right place to ask this kinda thing....apolgise otherwise.

Dayvenkirq View Drop Down

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Posted: May 17 2013 at 10:53

1) I don't know any blogs on this site other than those "unofficial" ones our users started. E.g. Slartibartfast's blog or The Dark Elf File.

2) What "Cardiacs Band thing" are you speaking of? Their page? An appreciation thread dedicated to them?

Snow Dog

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Posted: May 17 2013 at 11:14

a couple more problems.....

articulacy

That's only one, but worth saying twice. Smile

Dean

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Posted: May 17 2013 at 11:41

1a. Some Blogs are auto-locked due to inactivity, tell us which ones you want to post in and I'll re-open them.

1b. If you take too long typing your post it will have timed-out by the time you get to hit "Post Reply". If you think more than a few minutes have passed since you loaded the page then it can have timed-out so copy the post first (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C) then refresh the page, then paste it back in (Ctrl-V) before posting.

2. This Cardiacs thread: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=75580&PN=7 ?

Try selecting "Any Date" when searching for a keyword such as "Cardiacs" - if you opened this thread without doing a forum search first then sod off and quit bothering us.

What?

22tones

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Joined: July 10 2013
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Posted: July 10 2013 at 16:26

Hello folks! I am new here. I am not allowed to start a new topic so I thought I'd try posting my question here. This is obviously an extremely valuable resource but some of the ratings don't seem consistent with the full set of reviews. For example,

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=4684

shows 2 stars and says "2.08 | 12 ratings"

But when I try to look at the 12 ratings here

http://www.progarchives.com/album-reviews.asp?id=4684,

I see the following numbers of stars:

2 1 4 2 4 4 2 3 5 2 4

which is only 11 ratings, with an average of exactly 3.

So where is the 2.08 coming from? I would expect to see 3.00

Thanks for your help!

Dayvenkirq View Drop Down

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Posted: July 10 2013 at 16:29

^ Special Collab/Prog Reviewer ratings with reviews are worth more than the other ones.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - July 10 2013 at 17:37

22tones

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Joined: July 10 2013
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Posted: July 10 2013 at 16:43

Thanks for the quick reply Dayvenkirq! May I ask,

1. What is the formula used to arrive at the 2.08?

2. Why does it say 12 ratings when I only see 11?

3. What are the qualifications to become a Special Collab/Prog Reviewer?

Thanks again!

seventhsojourn View Drop Down

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Posted: July 10 2013 at 17:13

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_average

2. One rating has probably been deleted.

3. http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13080

By the way if you want to search for other topics you might have a question about, click on the ''search'' button at the top of the page. Set find posts to ''any date'' and ''and older'', and display results as ''topics''

Dean

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Posted: July 10 2013 at 17:28

22tones wrote:

Hello folks! I am new here. I am not allowed to start a new topic so I thought I'd try posting my question here. This is obviously an extremely valuable resource but some of the ratings don't seem consistent with the full set of reviews. For example,

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=4684

shows 2 stars and says "2.08 | 12 ratings"

But when I try to look at the 12 ratings here

http://www.progarchives.com/album-reviews.asp?id=4684,

I see the following numbers of stars:

2 1 4 2 4 4 2 3 5 2 4

which is only 11 ratings, with an average of exactly 3.

So where is the 2.08 coming from? I would expect to see 3.00

Thanks for your help!

The answer to your question comes in two parts.

First part:

Because the database contains 40,755 albums and 839,715 ratings the Averages are not continuously calculated. They only get updated when a new review or rating is published. Unfortunately some users abuse the system and their account gets suspended and all their ratings get deleted. When that happens the database does not automatically update the album page for every album so the averages do not get recalculated.

If the page says 12 ratings and you can only see 11 it means that a rating has been deleted but the page (and therefore the average) has not been updated.

Second part:

A review counts as x10, a review by a collaborator counts as x20

(2x20 + 1x10 + 4 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 2 + 4) ÷ (20 + 10 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1)

= 80 ÷ 39

= 2.051

Since the page says 12 ratings gave an average of 2.08 we can surmise that the deleted rating was a 3-star rating [(80+3) ÷ (39+1) = 2.08]

This is one of the reasons I don't like to delete ratings, but the page will sort itself out the next time someone rates the album.

Edited by Dean - July 10 2013 at 17:29

What?

22tones

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Joined: July 10 2013
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Points: 3

Posted: July 10 2013 at 18:04

Thanks for your replies.

I hope it is not inappropriate for me to say so here, but that is a very heavy weighting. Averages are useful because with more and more independent observations, the average becomes a very accurate estimate of the "truth".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

Here there are only two observations which are given high weight, while the rest have much lower weight.

In a medium as prone to abuse as the WWW, I certainly sympathize with the desire to avoid having results manipulated by hackers, spammers, trolls, virulent fans with limitless free time, etc., and thus the system whereby a reviewer must prove their honesty, objectivity, and dedication before their rating can have much influence.

However in this case, when the overall rating is influenced so heavily by only two observations, the condition that makes averaging so useful -- the tendency of positive and negative errors to cancel one another out as in the law of large numbers -- is not met. Therefore the rating here of 2.08 cannot be considered in any way reliable or representative of the listeners of, or even experts on, progressive rock. Users might be expected to understand that if an album has only 2 ratings, the average rating cannot be considered very reliable -- but since on the face of it there are supposedly 12 ratings here, I believe the majority of users (most of whom are casual) will be misled as to the reliability of the 2.08 figure.

There are various remedies one could consider, but as I suspect I would be far overreaching my standing here with any such suggestions, I'll simply leave it at that for now. I warmly welcome any responses, but mostly I am glad to have come across this very valuable site. In the meantime, thank you Dean and seventhsojourn for your helpful replies.

Dean

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Posted: July 10 2013 at 20:05

22tones wrote:

Thanks for your replies.

I hope it is not inappropriate for me to say so here, but that is a very heavy weighting. Averages are useful because with more and more independent observations, the average becomes a very accurate estimate of the "truth".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

Here there are only two observations which are given high weight, while the rest have much lower weight.

In a medium as prone to abuse as the WWW, I certainly sympathize with the desire to avoid having results manipulated by hackers, spammers, trolls, virulent fans with limitless free time, etc., and thus the system whereby a reviewer must prove their honesty, objectivity, and dedication before their rating can have much influence.

However in this case, when the overall rating is influenced so heavily by only two observations, the condition that makes averaging so useful -- the tendency of positive and negative errors to cancel one another out as in the law of large numbers -- is not met. Therefore the rating here of 2.08 cannot be considered in any way reliable or representative of the listeners of, or even experts on, progressive rock. Users might be expected to understand that if an album has only 2 ratings, the average rating cannot be considered very reliable -- but since on the face of it there are supposedly 12 ratings here, I believe the majority of users (most of whom are casual) will be misled as to the reliability of the 2.08 figure.

There are various remedies one could consider, but as I suspect I would be far overreaching my standing here with any such suggestions, I'll simply leave it at that for now. I warmly welcome any responses, but mostly I am glad to have come across this very valuable site. In the meantime, thank you Dean and seventhsojourn for your helpful replies.

The Law of Large Numbers is not applicable here because we never achieve high numbers of ratings except in very rare circumstance so the average will never approach "the truth".

From my observations of rating trends for individual albums we don't see averages stabalise until we've amassed 100s of ratings (with or without weighting). Most albums here never exceed 20 ratings so the averages for those albums will never be an accurate representation. With or without weighting an average of 11 ratings is never going to be reliable, 2.08 is no less reliable than 3 or 3.33. Compare the ratings of FightingMole and SimonWyatt - there is a strong indication in the voting simularities that those two accounts are the same person and once we get that situation the average will never be reliable. Unfortunately on albums with very low numbers of ratings the review weighting does severly distort the computed averages, especially when there is a large variance between those ratings and the mean calculated without weighting and without systematic rating abuse by deliberate manipulation.

Average ratings should not be taken seriously - they are a guide and little else - look at the distribtion plots presented on each album page, they are far more indicative:.

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(9%)

Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(36%)

Good, but non-essential (9%)

Collectors/fans only (36%)

Poor. Only for completionists (9%)

... a double peaks (36%) at 4 stars and 2 stars tells you far more than the calculated average ever will because this is not a 3-star album when you see the distribution presented in this way.

Edited by Dean - July 10 2013 at 20:06

What?