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Author Topic: rounding averages  (Read 1580 times)

marko

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rounding averages
« on: July 22, 2008, 07:18:24 am »

If an album has 11 tracks, 8 rated 4 stars and 3 rated 3 stars MC gives it an average rating of 3 stars.

Intuitively, you look at the list and think surely, that's more like a 4 than a 3?

If you work it out manually, the average is 3.72 recurring.

Rather than rounding down, wouldn't it be better if MC rounded 'to the nearest figure' which in this case, would indeed be 4, and be a fairer refelction on the albums average rating.

-marko

NoCodeUK

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2008, 06:13:55 pm »

It would appear in this case MC isn't actually rounding at all but simply truncating.  I would guess its a case of a float being converted to an int and the fraction just being lopped off.

Adam
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glynor

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2008, 12:19:52 am »

It would appear in this case MC isn't actually rounding at all but simply truncating.  I would guess its a case of a float being converted to an int and the fraction just being lopped off.

That would certainly seem to be the case, but what you don't realize is that MC's Group Rating feature is predictive, not averaged.

You see, MC knows that generally album ratings for any particular artist tend to decline over time, until they finally reach the 0 point.  Artists (particularly bands, but it applies to all artists) start out pretty good, since they are in fierce competition to get "noticed" at that time.  Occasionally they do initially improve over time, but often these are marginal improvements and they turn out to be short lived.  Time is a harsh mistress, and eventually (like with entropy) the sheer power of the vague force known only as Musical Crappiness eventually wins out.

I've taken the liberty of plotting out marko's initial example, adding some additional "predictive" data points to the right end of the chart, showing where this particular band is heading.  The X axis represents the length of the artist's career in years, and the Y axis represents the album ratings.  Note, when the band first starts off (year 0, if you will), they actually have a negative musical crappiness factor.  This, unfortunately, cannot last....  Note the unstoppable direction of the Musical Crappiness Force.



So, while it may seem that your artist should be rated with a 3.75 now... MC knows full well that this rating is going to suffer badly over the next few years, and is acting as an "early warning system" for you.  Be thankful!  If you monitor the situation closely, you can predict the exact moment when your particular band will have "jumped the shark" and the album won't be worth listening to at all, even once, and avoid making that dreadful mistake.  With time, and improved models, MC will be able to fully classify new albums as "buy" or "are you nuts?" with near 100% accuracy.
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gappie

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2008, 01:16:51 am »

 ;D

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darichman

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2008, 02:14:07 am »

Bwahaha

The universe proceeds naturally to a state of disorder... as does music. Well done :)
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hit_ny

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #5 on: July 23, 2008, 09:51:33 am »

lol, finally some life in the forum  ;D

on a side note your theory, glynor, sometimes applies when searching out new bands, but its still quite iffy, sometimes they peak early or in the middle or at the very end, personally i've founnd the biggest factor that affects crappiness is the number of listens & your general experience with any given genre, genres by themselves have their golden yrs too ya know
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glynor

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2008, 10:42:06 am »

It took me entirely too long to make that graph last night, but I was laughing the whole time.   ;D
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NoCodeUK

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #7 on: July 23, 2008, 02:46:34 pm »

LMAO  Very good.  I never realised MC was so Big Brother... :D
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Raphoune

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Re: rounding averages
« Reply #8 on: July 26, 2008, 06:32:04 pm »

Interesting analysis ^^
But I (once more) support this request as I'd like to have 5-stars rated albums.

Raph
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