3 ms·

If we're going to use a Bayesian treatment, the real sin is throwing away your uncertainty. What I would love to see is a ranking algorithm that provides an el

by tel 17y ago

If we're going to use a Bayesian treatment, the real sin is throwing away your uncertainty. What I would love to see is a ranking algorithm that provides an elegant, intuitive interface to fuzzy ranking. If we can't be confident of the ordering, why pretend? It's a usability problem, not a statistics problem. Your estimator is slightly more resilient than Amazon's and somewhat less conservative than the author's. It's definitely simpler, but who cares? Visitors never have to compute it after all.

araneae 17y ago
Agreed. Even if you find the formula scary, he implemented it in Ruby for you. It's a pretty short trip to implement it in the language of your choice.
gjm11 17y ago
I think it's a huge usability problem, if we're talking about something Amazon-like that's presenting ranked data to an unsophisticated audience. Why pretend? Because it produces something the user might be able to understand, that's why. (Yes, it would be extremely cool to make an elegant, intuitive interface to a fuzzy ranking. One reason why it would be extremely cool is that it's totally not obvious how it can be done, or even that it can be done.) I wasn't suggesting that my estimator is better because it's simpler, nor that anyone should care; just pointing out that the author of the article made a huge leap from "here are two things that don't work" to "and here is the specific arbitrary math-heavy thing I think you should do instead".
- tel 17y ago
  I agree. I think it's a great problem to motivate a startup on.
- ntoshev 17y ago
  With Bayesian average (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219154 , http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_true_Bayesian_estimate_mean_in_connection_with_the_IMDb_Top_250_ratings http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_true_Bayesian_estimate_m...) you can easily put a slider saying how much the missing votes count (or how much preference do you give to items with more ratings).

by tel 17y ago

araneae 17y ago

Agreed. Even if you find the formula scary, he implemented it in Ruby for you. It's a pretty short trip to implement it in the language of your choice.

gjm11 17y ago

I think it's a huge usability problem, if we're talking about something Amazon-like that's presenting ranked data to an unsophisticated audience. Why pretend? Because it produces something the user might be able to understand, that's why. (Yes, it would be extremely cool to make an elegant, intuitive interface to a fuzzy ranking. One reason why it would be extremely cool is that it's totally not obvious how it can be done, or even that it can be done.) I wasn't suggesting that my estimator is better because it's simpler, nor that anyone should care; just pointing out that the author of the article made a huge leap from "here are two things that don't work" to "and here is the specific arbitrary math-heavy thing I think you should do instead".

tel 17y ago
I agree. I think it's a great problem to motivate a startup on.
ntoshev 17y ago
With Bayesian average (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219154 , http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_true_Bayesian_estimate_mean_in_connection_with_the_IMDb_Top_250_ratings http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_true_Bayesian_estimate_m...) you can easily put a slider saying how much the missing votes count (or how much preference do you give to items with more ratings).