Monday, July 13, 2009

Why most reviews online are biased and curved (and therefore a SCAM)

Did you ever notice that most online reviews are curved to the positive? Here's why.

Most reviews let you rate a product , service, or company with a rating from 1 to 5. Sounds fair. right? Wrong!!!!

Take this example:

We'll talk about reviews for this widget.

Mister Aye thinks is the best thing to come out since toilet paper. He quickly gives it a rating of 5.
Miss Bee also bought this product and it broke before she got home. She thinks it's useless and a total waste of money. She gives it a rating of 1.
Mrs. Sea also buys the product and it simply won't do what widgets are supposed to do. What a piece of crap. She gives it a rating of 1.

The average rating is 5+1+1=7 / 3 = 2.33. The site so nicely shows a rating of 2.5 stars (rounded to the nearest half).

When Mr. Dee comes to the site and checks out the rating, it's 2.5 stars out of 5 stars. Okay, he says, half the people like it half don't, an average product. He then decides to buy it, or not.

Mr. Dee was SCAMMMED by the site. For every one person that likes it, there are two people that think it's junk. The true rating should be 1.66 (5+0+0=5/3=1.66). I think Mr. Dee may have decided against the purchase had he seen 1.5 stars instead of the 2.5 shown.
In other words, stars are partly a SCAM!!!!!!!!!

4 comments:

SuperSpeedGraphic said...

This is interesting. I do let the stars attract my attention, but I try to read the individual reviews (when available).

I just found this blog and am really enjoying it. It looks like you have taken a break from posting, I hope that you have good articles in the works.

s3v3red said...

Or you could just not be a dumbass and realized that 2.5 is not half of 5 if you dont start at 0.

0 - 5 gives you the potential of 6 numbers. (0, 1, 2, X 3, 4, 5) and as you can see by the X there are 3 numbers to each side, determining that as the middle (2.5). But with 1-5 you only get 5 numbers.

(1, 2, X3X, 4, 5) and obviously seen here 3.0 is half because this is actually a rating system of 4 (0, 1, X2X, 3, 4). So the true number of 2.3 stands correct and only takes advantage of morons that dont question anything. 2.5 on a rating from 1-5 is actually more like 28% if my math is correct.

Anonymous said...

2.5 stars fills up half the void, so it looks like half, oh wait - 2.5 IS half of 5.
There can never be 0 stars, there is no void!
The point here is that star rating systems are stupid and numbers should be used instead.

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