3 ms·

Most of the general population have no idea what a normal distribution is. You have to put yourself into a common mindset to figure out the meaning of things d

Most of the general population have no idea what a normal distribution is. You have to put yourself into a common mindset to figure out the meaning of things designed for the general population. It doesn't need to be explained because half the population is too dumb to understand a written explaination anyway. 5 means they did good, anything less means you have complaints that you think are serious enough to warrant effective "demotion" of the driver.

ta1243 3y ago
So stupid system with no instructions on how to calibrate. How do you say someone did a better than expected job if the "baseline" is 5? If they expect the normal to be 5, why give 1-4 as options. Why not "good" and "bad" Not to mention the cultural differences between countries. While America loves being over-the-top with fake "oh you are so awesome", other countries (say Japan and the UK) are far more reserved.
- acdha 3y ago
  > If they expect the normal to be 5, why give 1-4 as options. Why not "good" and "bad" Some places do use a thumbs up/down rating but I think a lot of companies like the stress the 1-5 or 1-10 ratings put on workers. If you view your workers as easily replaceable, stress is a feature and the false precision lets you say that any particular outcome was data driven.
- zztop44 3y ago
  Japan has the opposite problem on restaurant review websites, where ~3.0 stars means OK and ~3.65 stars or above means absolutely bloody fantastic.
  - themaninthedark 3y ago
    So they use the system as intended?
- kergonath 3y ago
  I think a 3-states scale would be good. Something like “happy”, “not happy”, and ”feared for your life”. You’d want a way to identify outliers. But using a quantitative scale for this is not a good idea.
  - iainmerrick 3y ago
    I'm a fan of 4 stars, as I think it forces you to make a real choice, while still being simple enough that it's hard to misinterpret: 4 stars => great 3 stars => quite good 2 stars => not so good 1 star => bad There's no score right in the middle so you can't sit on the fence (unless you ruin it by allowing half stars, Ebert style).
kergonath 3y ago
> Most of the general population have no idea what a normal distribution is. They have an intuitive understanding of what an average is, though. And when provided a scale the vast majority of people assume that the average is in the middle. If some smart arse grading system is not intuitively understood by someone’s customers (and seriously, people have something like 10 seconds to make that choice), it’s not the users who are stupid.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Most people don't think a 3 of 5 rating is "good", rather it's half-way to utter failure. 5 star ratings as used by the general public are calibrated as 5 meeting all reasonable expectations and no special rating given for exceptional performance. Most people don't need instruction on how to rate on this scale, they just give everybody a 5 unless something happened to piss them off.
- simiones 3y ago
  No, most people when asked to rate something think back to their school days, where "has done all the work we asked for" is either the max grade (A/10/20), or just under (say, A-/9/18). So, most people give 5 stars (or more rarely 4 stars) to drivers that have met their expectations.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    That is very country specific. Here scale is 4 to 10. 4 being failure and 10 being essentially perfection. Average work being 7 with 6 below and 8 pretty good and 9 good. Scaling this to 1 to 5 would mean 1 is failure, 2 is not entirely failed, 3 average, 4 good and 5 perfection.

ta1243 3y ago

So stupid system with no instructions on how to calibrate. How do you say someone did a better than expected job if the "baseline" is 5? If they expect the normal to be 5, why give 1-4 as options. Why not "good" and "bad" Not to mention the cultural differences between countries. While America loves being over-the-top with fake "oh you are so awesome", other countries (say Japan and the UK) are far more reserved.

acdha 3y ago
> If they expect the normal to be 5, why give 1-4 as options. Why not "good" and "bad" Some places do use a thumbs up/down rating but I think a lot of companies like the stress the 1-5 or 1-10 ratings put on workers. If you view your workers as easily replaceable, stress is a feature and the false precision lets you say that any particular outcome was data driven.
zztop44 3y ago
Japan has the opposite problem on restaurant review websites, where ~3.0 stars means OK and ~3.65 stars or above means absolutely bloody fantastic.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  So they use the system as intended?
kergonath 3y ago
I think a 3-states scale would be good. Something like “happy”, “not happy”, and ”feared for your life”. You’d want a way to identify outliers. But using a quantitative scale for this is not a good idea.
- iainmerrick 3y ago
  I'm a fan of 4 stars, as I think it forces you to make a real choice, while still being simple enough that it's hard to misinterpret: 4 stars => great 3 stars => quite good 2 stars => not so good 1 star => bad There's no score right in the middle so you can't sit on the fence (unless you ruin it by allowing half stars, Ebert style).

kergonath 3y ago

> Most of the general population have no idea what a normal distribution is. They have an intuitive understanding of what an average is, though. And when provided a scale the vast majority of people assume that the average is in the middle. If some smart arse grading system is not intuitively understood by someone’s customers (and seriously, people have something like 10 seconds to make that choice), it’s not the users who are stupid.

lupusreal 3y ago
Most people don't think a 3 of 5 rating is "good", rather it's half-way to utter failure. 5 star ratings as used by the general public are calibrated as 5 meeting all reasonable expectations and no special rating given for exceptional performance. Most people don't need instruction on how to rate on this scale, they just give everybody a 5 unless something happened to piss them off.
simiones 3y ago
No, most people when asked to rate something think back to their school days, where "has done all the work we asked for" is either the max grade (A/10/20), or just under (say, A-/9/18). So, most people give 5 stars (or more rarely 4 stars) to drivers that have met their expectations.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  That is very country specific. Here scale is 4 to 10. 4 being failure and 10 being essentially perfection. Average work being 7 with 6 below and 8 pretty good and 9 good. Scaling this to 1 to 5 would mean 1 is failure, 2 is not entirely failed, 3 average, 4 good and 5 perfection.