4 ms·

I implemented this in a rating system once. Got multiple bug reports, people complained that the system calculates averages wrong, because there are two ratings

• edash 15y ago
  Why show the second figure to the user? They don't need to see the calculation you made to determine the sort. Just sort the objects in the order determined by this formula and only show the ratings given by users in the interface.
  • jwr 15y ago
    This was a system where I was supposed to display a star-rating (1-5 stars, with fractional stars as well) for each item. The people reporting the problems were the users, and yes, this was bias, as they expected averages. That was exactly my point — while the statistics behind this method are sound, it is not what people expect. Building systems that don't do what people expect is difficult.
  • esrauch 15y ago
    This is mildly amusing because above in this thread the exact opposite comment/response happened; someone said they used it for sorting but showed the mean next to items, and got bug reports that 4.5 was sorted above 5.0. The reply was that he should have just exposed the numbers that they are sorting by as the visible rating in the interface.
• brown9-2 15y ago
  I'm curious, who filed the bugs - the users of the system or the fellow builders of the system? If you rolled back this algorithm based on the bug reports, it sounds like you might have ended up listening to the prior bias of the people on your team, rather than the feedback of the people meant to use the system.