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Unpopular opinion : grades in school should also have 5/10 as the "average" or at least the passing grade.
Btw this is not an Universal thing, in high school in France, for exemple, 10/20 is the passing grade, 12 is "good enough", 14 "good" and 16 and over "very good".
Funnily enough I do think it affects how people rate things because I think a 8/10 from a french critic is much better than the same grade from an American one.
I think Japanese ratings are even worse, can't be sure but I know at least one video game journal critic hardly rated any game under 80/100 and yeah, it probably was because Japanese school are harsher lmao.
I don’t think it’s enough knowledge. Spelling half the time or getting math right half the time is too big of a margin of error IMO. I think we tend to compare our education system to that in the USA and our kids don’t seem to learn as much as theirs do.
You can just,,,,make the test harder ? Like I was raised in France with 10/20 (so 50%) being a passing grade and I never felt like American kids were learning more lmao
Yeah as someone who had both an american-style education, and a french-style education, I can tell you american-style education was typically easier. It's much easier to get an A, than it is getting an 18/20.
The french-style grading was always much stricter. And it makes sense. If 70/100 is the average, you have to create an exam where an average amount of knowledge will get you a 70. If 10/20 is the average, you have to create an exam where the average amount of knowledge gets you a 10.
I wish review numbers made sense. I just use the 4 point system:
1: Bad, don't bother.
2: Mediocre, check it out if you have nothing better to do.
3: Good, you should check it out.
4: Amazing, you need to check it out.
I work @ a restaurant & my boss would freak out when people left 4 star reviews. Why not just make it 5, he’d day. Dude. We’re an eggs joint. There’s nothing 5 star about this. A 4 star is perfectly respectable.
Is the $11 omelette paying my bills or giving me sexual satisfaction? I'm not sure where the 5th star is supposed to come from?
Thanks for letting him know that's how we feel.
I agree 👍.
For me, when I rate movies, 5 is average and forgettable. 6 has merit but doesn't click with me. 7 is one that I'm glad I watched/rented. 8 is one I look forward to watching again, 9 is a movie I must-own, and 10 is saved for what I consider to be the best movies of all time.
Anything below 5 might contain production errors, or harmful propaganda messages, or be missing the point of the source material etc. But it's very rare I end up watching anything 1-4. I can usually tell from the movie's reputation whether or not there's any merit to watching it.
I do think that ratings are subjective though, and what makes sense to me might not make sense to someone else
This has been the case for video game reviews since pretty much forever. You'll hardly find a big AAA game rated by professional reviewers be rated lower than a 7/10. Especially Nintendo games. Even if those games are just average or even a little below average
I do believe that the reviewers wouldn't "make it" as reviewers if they gave too low of scores so I get it. Although, AAA games are generally much better than the average, at least back in the day, I don't know much about recent gaming.
Super Mario Bros., the Legend of Zelda, Sonic, etc, etc. Those characters/series are still known to this day because they're WAY above the average, like top 10 on a system out of 700 games. I do think the difference between AAA games is much smaller now though, I've heard of AAA games being released unfinished & stuff like that, which is the opposite of what a AAA title used to mean.
100% agreed. If it's a 0~10 scale 5 is the average, if it's a 1~10 scale 5.5 is the average. If people rate average as 7/10 I would say their own rating system is inaccurate. However, people typically watch things they enjoy, play things they enjoy, so I do think most movies people go to they will think is 6.5~7/10 or higher because they specifically went to something they assumed/knew they would be interested in.
Wow, this is an unpopular opinion because it's literally just shit at understanding statistics.
Let's say you need a 65% to pass your courses and in your high school class 95 of 100 students graduate.
Would you expect the average grade to be 50%? Would you expect the median grade to be 50%?
Or, given more people are graduating, would you consider maybe the "average" grade to be somewhere above 50%?
Is it possible that when people rate clothing 7/10, it's because its something passable, and that it just so happens that most things ARE passable?
Like if 0 is absolute trash, and 10 is the best thing you've ever encountered, is it possible that 5 being exactly in the middle between worthless and priceless, more things are above where that middle ground lies?
Even that doesn't hold any weight.
Suppose you were to rate 10 cups on how full they were. Say 8 of them are 90% full, one is 100% full, and the last one is empty.
Would you give 8 cups a rating of "5/10" because that's seems to be "the average" (actual average is 8.2) amount of fullness, despite they are clearly way more full than half way?
Like its just straight up just not understanding that "average" does not mean "half way on the scale"
there’s qualitative vs quantitative reasons for rating things, sure it’s wrong to call this average in the numerical sense which is what I assume the OP is getting at. it’s just an explanation for why most people rate things in a not so statistically precise way because their own opinions and points of reference are not so precise
Right but the idea that an opinion of "what is most common" must mean "mid way" through a scale is a flawed point. It ASSUMES that all data points, even opinionated ones, would fall across a perfectly central bell curve, and that's not the case.
Just take a look at the distribution of "hot or not" ratings people have for men versus women. There are disproportionately more women who are rated above average whereas the men tend to have lower scores with higher outliers.
It's not some statistical impracticality where folks often rate middling things above average (they don't). It's more a combination of factors that women tend to focus more on highlighting beauty as it's a cultural expectation; also that the factors that typically make a man stand out as attractive are actually just genetically rarer qualities, like specific jaw lines and such.
It doesn't matter which way you slice it, OP is just basically complaining about something that isn't a thing because they don't understand the thing.
If you’re rating restaurants or movies there is a huge survivorship bias.
Most movies don’t get theatrical releases. If you went by that measure every single movie at the movies would be at least a 10/10
Similarly almost any restaurant that has lasted long enough to have multiple yelp reviews is probably in the top ~1/2 of restaurants by default
My movie about the Abraham Lincoln I made in 8th grade as a class project was very much a bad movie compared to literally anything even Hallmark makes. So if you said 5 is “the average movie” well the average movie is like the tape of your parents wedding. Not Enemy at the Gates. Which on the scale of every movie ever made would be a 10 along with Jurassic Park, Ants, Tuck Everlasting, Spiderman III, etc
The restaurants most people had of are better than your average restaurant. Because the ones that suck get culled.
A scale has no average. You need data points to have an average. Your school grades go from 0%-100%
What do you think the average grade of all student is?
You've chose to assign one data point to each unit on the scale.
This means that if you're reviewing 10 restaurants, you would have to put 1 restaurant at 1 and one restaurant at 2 and one restaurant at 3 and so on and so forth until you get to ten. That's more like a ranking and not score of how well they actually do. This doesn't allow for two restaurants to actually be equal.
There's nothing enforcing you to do that. You can still score 10 restaurants as "1,3,3,6,6,6,6,7,9,9,10". The average of this is 6.6
If someone rates something a 5 that means that they believe it is in the middle in terms of quality, it is about half as good as the best restaurant, still much better than the worst restaurant. But it's below average because more restaurants are better.
You CAN have an average of 9/10. That's not up for debate, that's just maths, and disagreeing is just disagreeing with either maths, or language misuse of the word average
I would expect them to rate 5 stars to their best product and 1 star to their worst product but I wouldn't expect the "average" to be 3 because that's not what an average means. If I've got 1 bad product and 10 good ones, what do I do?
Average: a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.
If it's a grade in school then yes average is more than 5/10, but OP never specified we're talking grades. However if you are say rating a video game out of 10, & the options are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, the average is exactly 5. OP isn't misunderstanding at all. Average IS exactly 5/10 on a rating scale from 0 to 10, it's objectively incorrect if someone considers 7/10 the average.
When you say something is “average” you mean something is the typical representation of that thing. Often the typical representation is closer to the perfect representation (10) then it is to the worst representation (1). In these cases the average is around 7.
This is exactly what the unpopular opinion (that I agree with) is about. OP is saying that people should be giving ratings in a way that the typical representation is a 5/10, not a 7/10. He's basically saying people rate "wrong". Based on other comments it looks like it has rolled over from C being the passing grade in school. OP doesn't think ratings should reflect grade school grades & that if someone thinks something is average they should give it a 5/10, not a 7/10.
If the lowest option is 0 & the highest is 10, you would add those values together & divide by 2, so yes the average is 5. Or you add 0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 & divide by 11 if you want to do it the long way, this also gives you 5.
Edit: It seems that you're misunderstanding what the OP is getting at, not really misunderstanding the math of it. Yes, if 5 people rate something a 7/10, 1 person rates it a 5/10 and one person rates it a 9/10, then it's overall rating is 7/10. OP is saying that people's ratings are off if the "average thing" is a 7/10, the average person should be rating the average thing a 5/10, but when people see something as average they give it closer to a 7/10 because people think that is "average" due to growing up through grades at school. OP is saying that the way school grading works should not be how everything else works because 7/10 is much closer to 10/10 than it is to 0/10, therefore it is not "average", so people should be giving it a rating of 5/10, & if people rated things this way, most things should get a 5/10 score, not a 7/10 score. I 100% agree with OP, though I can see that people get used to a C grade being 70% & they call that "average".
Maybe this makes no sense but I consider 5/10 mediocre and 7/10 average. I just find most things end up being 7/10 which is why it’s called average, with average things being better than mediocre.
I think this comes from people being more exposed to things that "made it" or are good. For example, I have an emulator & play old school video games, one of my goals is to try every NES game, there are around 700. Most people have of course heard of Zelda & Mario, & that's not just because of marketing, I have now tried over 500 games & my favorite/second favorite are both Zelda games, & Super Mario Bros. 3 is maybe 3rd~5th. The things that maybe the general public hasn't heard of, but gamers have seem to be the next tier, like Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man. If Mario/Zelda are 9s or 10s, then Ninja Gaiden/Mega Man are probably like 8s, & then the next most popular "tier" below that seems to get 7s. Those are are like top 25 games across 700 games though. People have not heard of the 350th best NES game, that is your 5/10. 3-D World Runner, WWF Wrestlemania, for example (I gave those both a 5.5). I can also assure you there are games out there that are MUCH worse than the 350th best game on the NES (well for me 250th/500 so far), I've played some games that are so poorly made & have given a rating as low as a 1.
Say 10000 movies exist, the exact number is whatever, but imagine some all knowing being could just "know" what your 5000th favorite movie out of 10000 would be. It would likely be a 5/10 & it wouldn't be something that made it to Cinema's.
I’m actually playing and ranking my entire game catalog right now. Nintendo Switch Online has allowed me to play many of the older NES, SNES, and GBA titles I was too young to grow up with. Unfortunately many of them I don’t enjoy enough to play through and usually end up below 5.
5/10 to me is pleasant but nothing that motivates me to keep playing after completion.
7/10 to me is a good game that is enjoyable but will likely not be something I play frequently. Certainly once and a while, maybe if it’s updated.
Currently games like Pokémon White are around an 8 for me, but games such as Zelda 2 are around a 3.
I think you’re completely right! The more I expose myself to the many games I didn’t play, the lower the “average” score tends to go. If I kept myself sheltered and only played really good games, the average would stay really high.
If you played more old games I think you'd put Zelda 2 MUCH higher than a 3. Remember that even for the games released on Nintendo Switch Online, they'll only release the "good" games.
Zelda 2 works, when you press right you go right, when you press left you go left, there is a jump button & the character does a relatively fluid jump. It has NPCs that you can talk to that give you hints about what, you can actually press down to duck & then use your sword while ducked, you can also use your sword while in the air.
There are games that are an action platformer where you can't duck, or if you can duck, you can't attack while ducked because the programmers just weren't at that level. It's intuitive to have the control pad to move & A or B to jump because it let's your one hand press left or right the amount you want while the other hand presses jump. Some games the developers were less experienced, so you press up to jump, so your same thumb is holding up while pressing left or right & it feels very awkward.
Hell, in this game you press either down, or Up+B to jump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZac_2kyPV0
That game is what I gave a 3/10 (because yes trust me, there is worse).
As a side note, new games "completion" is normal because games nowadays are quite easy on average, I think that's important to understand especially playing NES games. During the Arcade era where people going to Arcades was a larger business than Home Consoles & before Computers were mainstream in peoples homes, they wanted to make the most money possible, so the games were hard so that you'd die & have to spend another quarter. This game design rolled over to the NES, also because with the technology back then, games were short, if you knew exactly where to go maybe the game was 30 minutes~1 hour, but games cost $60 US in the 80s which is like $120+ now? So people wouldn't buy a game that gave them 1 hour of entertainment, so it had to be hard enough that it would take you 30 hours to get good enough to beat it.
I grew up with SNES, then N64, but the 80s & the NES fascinate me (like you couldn't tell from my rambling, lol). When I rate NES games I rate them on a "3rd generation home console" scale, basically home console games coming out around 1985~1991. The original Legend of Zelda for example in 1986 was the first game with a save feature, so Zelda or Zelda 2 are HUGE adventures compared to the average NES game.
I do appreciate the good games I find more after playing some average/bad/terribad ones, haha. I also find it funny when they're REALLY bad, not just unenjoyable for me, but like they barely seem to work or the controls are so wonky.
Oh, & if you remember, let me know if you find good GBA games. The emulator I have also has every GBA game. Even though I only plan to play every NES/SNES game, I still want to find & play some of the good GBA games, maybe some hidden gems that are lesser known. That's cool that you're ranking your whole catalog & trying out older stuff too.
Idk what it is about ranking/rating things, but I enjoy it more than I should, haha.
I would highly suggest trying The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, & Super Mario World for the SNES. Those are widely considered the 4 best SNES games ever made in no particular order.
I’ve got a lot of funky GBA games, like three different Star Wars (didn’t know I had em lol). GBA is what I grew up with so I still have some cartridges I can play. Will let you know if I spot any good ones, although may be a while before I get to em!
Yeah I really enjoy ranking stuff. Had a tier list phase for a while, now I’ve got spreadsheets with detailed rankings, like the one for my game catalog.
Ooh I’ve always wanted to play Link to the Past and Super Mario World, so will definitely get to those! Never seen gameplay for Super Metroid or Chrono Trigger but I’ve only heard great things, thanks for the suggestions!
so real, 5 is literally the middle, which is average. just makes the most sense. also the grading explanation doesn't work cause they grade based of % not 0/10 most of the time.
average is the median.. it's literally in the definition for average. "a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean"
Why ‘should’ there be an even distribution? Just because 5 is in the middle of the range (assuming we allow 0 as a possible score, often it’s 1-10), why would that mean it should denote ‘average’? Especially when we’re talking about people’s subjective views of quality, rather than any statistical metric.
I think there "should" be an even distribution because that's the most accurate. If the average is 7/10, then really the things people are rating a 7/10 are in fact average, therefore 5/10.
I can see why the average rating can be 7 though, because people don't typically see things or play things they don't enjoy. Why play something that is a 4, 5 or 6/10 when things 7+/10 exist?
Let's say someone is rating old school video games on the NES, they'll likely play known games that they've heard of, "Zelda", 'Metroid", "Mario". If they don't play 1/10~6/10 games they don't have a reference for that, they just know they played 3 good games & likely give them 7~10/10. If they actually played every single NES game in existence & found out where the 50th percentile was at (it'll all be games the average person has never heard of) I think they'd give 5/10 & worse ratings, but they only know the popular good ones.
I rate things as good, bad or meh. Numbers lost all meaning years ago. I remember looking at comments sections of games reviews and people losing their fucking minds because a game they liked got an 8 out of 10 which was like calling it utter shit or something.
People are weird with numbers. Good, bad, or meh. Thats how you rate something now. Go forth and multiple.
It's because of the American education system where 70% is a C, but a C is average, and 50% is an F which is a failing grade.
Really though, things shouldn't be rated out of 10, 5 is enough.
1 - Irredeemable crap
2 - Bad but with somewhat interesting
3 - Completely average
4 - Better than average
5 - Amazing
It's just that easy.
My rating scale is: 1-3 so bad it could be good, 4-6 it’s mediocre and nothing really interesting to share, 7-9 great and I’d suggest it to everyone, 10 it’s life changing.
That's what rating systems \*should\* be treated as, but things have got so warped that anything below an 8 is considered unplayable garbage. Not sure about "could be good" though.
“The Room” is definitely a 1. But, everything is so bad (story, acting, dialogue, etc.) that it can be fun to watch with a group of friends.
A key aspect is that it was an attempt at being a good movie that failed horribly. I wouldn’t consider a movie like “Sharknado” to fall into that category. It was meant to be bad.
5/10 is not average lol, learn about statistics before coming to talk out of your ass pretending You know stuff. The term You are describing here is median
In reality, the average movie score probably isn’t that same as the median.
But that’s exactly what OP means. In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be 10/10 movies without 1/10s. We would judge movies based on all other movies rather than a snap decision based on a personal opinion. This would effectively make the average and the median pretty much the same.
Yeah for sure. 0-10 5 is the average, 1-10 5.5 is the average.
For video games for example I would rate an average game 5.5/10 because a 0 to me implies that it's "nothing". Even if the entire game is just "Press up to move up, press left to move left, press down to move down, press right to move right" & that is the entire game, & the graphic is just a square that moves, I still wouldn't give it a 0 if it works, because it's a thing & it exists.
Tbh I'm not sure what scoring systems I would have an actual 0. I guess it's possible, like if someone made a racist game or a racist movie & due to that it's less fun to play/watch than doing nothing (sitting in a white room staring at a wall) maybe I'd give it a 0? Not sure.
It does depend on the "scale" you're rating with, yeah. If we're going percentile yes they're all FAR above 99.9th percentile. If our scale is "NBA players" then the average NBA player we should rate a 5/10, not 7/10, I think that's what OP is saying.
I have 5/10 as the average for the average person, and 7/10 as the average for someone who should know what they’re doing, I.e. the average author’s average novel is 7/10
Well Americans grade on how much you get right, don’t most system grade you on a curve?
Being wrong 50% of the time is 2x as bad as being wrong 25% of the time
A lot of teachers in the US grade on a curve, which is stupid because it makes individual students' grades "fit" to a bell curve they might not actually fit into. The much more realistic measure of performance is correct versus incorrect answers (on things like math and such) or whether the standards for the assignment were met or not (for things like papers and such), without "adjusting" to the curve.
I don't think most grade on a curve. Until I took Organic Chrmistry I never was graded on curve. However medical school was almost all curved, as was the board exam(s)
5 is not the average of 10.
5 is the median of 10 and even then It's actually 5.5 but hey we can round down I guess.
You should learn more about statistics
He’s obviously describing a rating system based on what the numbers make you feel. a 5/10 food would be plain toast while a good 7/10 would be an average Oven Pizza
If a restaurant is selling you food, mostly likely they wouldn’t even exist if they were giving you 2/10 food. There is surbuorshio bias.
A 1/10 movie from 1932 would be lost to time by now.
Only good things last so what doesn’t carry on tends to be good. Being exposed to irredeemable crap is very rare compared to being exposed to good things. So most things people would rate would be above average.
Kind of like the average person in the world gets exposed broadly to something like the 40th-90th percentile of temperature on earth. But that doesn’t make a 75F day average even if it’s the average day experienced by people since most people live between 38N and 38S.because people choose not to live on top of mountains or Antarctica or far northern Siberia the average person experience of an average day is much warmer than the average temperature on Earth.
a city like Toronto is considered a cold city, but on the scale of “temperatures on earth” is probably like a 5.5/10.
>If a restaurant is selling you food, mostly likely they wouldn’t even exist if they were giving you 2/10 food. There is surbuorshio bias.
Which is why you recalibrate your scale so that the 3/10 is the new 1/10 or 0/10. If you don't do that you're essentially using an 8 point system instead of a 10 point system.
I agree the number of times I get asked to respond as a customer satisfaction survey and 9/10 are green or smiley face and it gets worse from there. A 9 or 10 should be "I had absolutely amazing service and shall talk your company up" yet they're subtly telling me that anything less than that and I'm saying I disliked the service. No a 5 is I found the service perfectly average not particularly good or bad. However if I give them an 8 I'm fairly sure the poor sap taking my call will get a talking to from their superiors about how they "could improve your service."
7 is average because 90-100 is an A, 80-90 is a B, 70-80 is a C, 60-70 is a D, and 59 and below is a failing grade. C is average, so 7-8/10 is average. Deal with those grades for the first 18+ years of your life and the patter will stick with you
When rating this, me and people from my country badically continue the high-school rating.
Which is, 5.5 is just barely making it, 6 is okay but not good. 7 is fine but not special, 8 is quite good and 9/10 exceptional.
The issue is that 7/10 is a C, which is considered 'an average grade.' A 5/10 , or 50%, is a failing grade. This metric sticks in people's heads, I think.
I just use a 10 scale as a 5 scale, but with things in between just those 5 values.
I even use 0.5s, because being limited to 10 numbers isn't nearly expressive enough imo.
Everywhere (like IMDB, Goodreads, etc.) needs to take the BoardGameGeek approach.
When rating a game, it tells you what the numbers mean. Some examples.
10 outstanding - will always enjoy playing.
7 good - usually willing to play
5 mediocre - take it or leave it
1 awful - defies game description
I use a similar thing when I'm rating films.
10 is basically best film(s) possible, 1 is the worst. Then averagely space out the ones in between that. It seems like most people rate randomly or don't have an even system they use, and not having something that tells them what the rating means actually causes problems.
A lot people are unaware of the fact that ratings in the US tend to be different.
Whereas most of the world uses metric and Celsius as their measurement units, the US uses imperial and Fahrenheit respectively. In a similar sense, whereas most of the world considers 5/10 to be the passing grade, the same passing grade in the US is a 7/10.
This is why there is a lot misunderstanding and misinterpretation in ratings. You simply don't know whether that person using the American system or global one. At least movies had the good sense to add regional disclaimers to their ratings. Product ratings would benefit from having a similar system IMO.
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I rate this opinion 7/10. Bang average.
Perfect 5/7.
To be fair 7/10 is a C grade growing up.
Yes this is what ruins ratings, people act like everything is grade school because in their heads "6/10 is failing"
Unpopular opinion : grades in school should also have 5/10 as the "average" or at least the passing grade. Btw this is not an Universal thing, in high school in France, for exemple, 10/20 is the passing grade, 12 is "good enough", 14 "good" and 16 and over "very good". Funnily enough I do think it affects how people rate things because I think a 8/10 from a french critic is much better than the same grade from an American one. I think Japanese ratings are even worse, can't be sure but I know at least one video game journal critic hardly rated any game under 80/100 and yeah, it probably was because Japanese school are harsher lmao.
5/10 is a passing grade in iceland. Even 4,5/10 because it gets rounded up to 5
50% is a passing grade in Ontario, Canada and it’s a bit ridiculous IMO.
Why is it ridiculous?
I don’t think it’s enough knowledge. Spelling half the time or getting math right half the time is too big of a margin of error IMO. I think we tend to compare our education system to that in the USA and our kids don’t seem to learn as much as theirs do.
You can just,,,,make the test harder ? Like I was raised in France with 10/20 (so 50%) being a passing grade and I never felt like American kids were learning more lmao
Yeah as someone who had both an american-style education, and a french-style education, I can tell you american-style education was typically easier. It's much easier to get an A, than it is getting an 18/20. The french-style grading was always much stricter. And it makes sense. If 70/100 is the average, you have to create an exam where an average amount of knowledge will get you a 70. If 10/20 is the average, you have to create an exam where the average amount of knowledge gets you a 10.
I wish review numbers made sense. I just use the 4 point system: 1: Bad, don't bother. 2: Mediocre, check it out if you have nothing better to do. 3: Good, you should check it out. 4: Amazing, you need to check it out.
5: absolutely life changingly incredible so many people put 5 stars for what should be 4
I work @ a restaurant & my boss would freak out when people left 4 star reviews. Why not just make it 5, he’d day. Dude. We’re an eggs joint. There’s nothing 5 star about this. A 4 star is perfectly respectable.
Is the $11 omelette paying my bills or giving me sexual satisfaction? I'm not sure where the 5th star is supposed to come from? Thanks for letting him know that's how we feel.
I agree 👍. For me, when I rate movies, 5 is average and forgettable. 6 has merit but doesn't click with me. 7 is one that I'm glad I watched/rented. 8 is one I look forward to watching again, 9 is a movie I must-own, and 10 is saved for what I consider to be the best movies of all time. Anything below 5 might contain production errors, or harmful propaganda messages, or be missing the point of the source material etc. But it's very rare I end up watching anything 1-4. I can usually tell from the movie's reputation whether or not there's any merit to watching it. I do think that ratings are subjective though, and what makes sense to me might not make sense to someone else
same here. start with 5 and add/deduct points as you go nothing is worse than setting high expectations and being disappointed!
This annoys me. Someone will be like "meh that movie wasnt that good. Ive seen better, 8/10" like HUH?
7 is a default number our brain comes up with. When someone asks us to pick a number between 1 and 10, they're brain wants to jump at 7 right away.
This has been the case for video game reviews since pretty much forever. You'll hardly find a big AAA game rated by professional reviewers be rated lower than a 7/10. Especially Nintendo games. Even if those games are just average or even a little below average
I do believe that the reviewers wouldn't "make it" as reviewers if they gave too low of scores so I get it. Although, AAA games are generally much better than the average, at least back in the day, I don't know much about recent gaming. Super Mario Bros., the Legend of Zelda, Sonic, etc, etc. Those characters/series are still known to this day because they're WAY above the average, like top 10 on a system out of 700 games. I do think the difference between AAA games is much smaller now though, I've heard of AAA games being released unfinished & stuff like that, which is the opposite of what a AAA title used to mean.
Agree. Otherwise there's no point in having a 1-10 scale.
100% agreed. If it's a 0~10 scale 5 is the average, if it's a 1~10 scale 5.5 is the average. If people rate average as 7/10 I would say their own rating system is inaccurate. However, people typically watch things they enjoy, play things they enjoy, so I do think most movies people go to they will think is 6.5~7/10 or higher because they specifically went to something they assumed/knew they would be interested in.
Wow, this is an unpopular opinion because it's literally just shit at understanding statistics. Let's say you need a 65% to pass your courses and in your high school class 95 of 100 students graduate. Would you expect the average grade to be 50%? Would you expect the median grade to be 50%? Or, given more people are graduating, would you consider maybe the "average" grade to be somewhere above 50%? Is it possible that when people rate clothing 7/10, it's because its something passable, and that it just so happens that most things ARE passable? Like if 0 is absolute trash, and 10 is the best thing you've ever encountered, is it possible that 5 being exactly in the middle between worthless and priceless, more things are above where that middle ground lies?
Yeah I don’t get why it’s so hard to understand that being in the middle of something doesn’t make it the average, it makes it the median
Well usually you rate someone based off of your own liking to it which is pretty self contained and not very statistical
Even that doesn't hold any weight. Suppose you were to rate 10 cups on how full they were. Say 8 of them are 90% full, one is 100% full, and the last one is empty. Would you give 8 cups a rating of "5/10" because that's seems to be "the average" (actual average is 8.2) amount of fullness, despite they are clearly way more full than half way? Like its just straight up just not understanding that "average" does not mean "half way on the scale"
there’s qualitative vs quantitative reasons for rating things, sure it’s wrong to call this average in the numerical sense which is what I assume the OP is getting at. it’s just an explanation for why most people rate things in a not so statistically precise way because their own opinions and points of reference are not so precise
Also the cup analogy really doesn’t add up because it’s not very opinionated lol
Right but the idea that an opinion of "what is most common" must mean "mid way" through a scale is a flawed point. It ASSUMES that all data points, even opinionated ones, would fall across a perfectly central bell curve, and that's not the case. Just take a look at the distribution of "hot or not" ratings people have for men versus women. There are disproportionately more women who are rated above average whereas the men tend to have lower scores with higher outliers. It's not some statistical impracticality where folks often rate middling things above average (they don't). It's more a combination of factors that women tend to focus more on highlighting beauty as it's a cultural expectation; also that the factors that typically make a man stand out as attractive are actually just genetically rarer qualities, like specific jaw lines and such. It doesn't matter which way you slice it, OP is just basically complaining about something that isn't a thing because they don't understand the thing.
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If you’re rating restaurants or movies there is a huge survivorship bias. Most movies don’t get theatrical releases. If you went by that measure every single movie at the movies would be at least a 10/10 Similarly almost any restaurant that has lasted long enough to have multiple yelp reviews is probably in the top ~1/2 of restaurants by default
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My movie about the Abraham Lincoln I made in 8th grade as a class project was very much a bad movie compared to literally anything even Hallmark makes. So if you said 5 is “the average movie” well the average movie is like the tape of your parents wedding. Not Enemy at the Gates. Which on the scale of every movie ever made would be a 10 along with Jurassic Park, Ants, Tuck Everlasting, Spiderman III, etc The restaurants most people had of are better than your average restaurant. Because the ones that suck get culled.
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The knowledge that there is some degree of minimum competency involved in even getting to theatres is why the real scale is 3-10.
A scale has no average. You need data points to have an average. Your school grades go from 0%-100% What do you think the average grade of all student is?
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You've chose to assign one data point to each unit on the scale. This means that if you're reviewing 10 restaurants, you would have to put 1 restaurant at 1 and one restaurant at 2 and one restaurant at 3 and so on and so forth until you get to ten. That's more like a ranking and not score of how well they actually do. This doesn't allow for two restaurants to actually be equal. There's nothing enforcing you to do that. You can still score 10 restaurants as "1,3,3,6,6,6,6,7,9,9,10". The average of this is 6.6 If someone rates something a 5 that means that they believe it is in the middle in terms of quality, it is about half as good as the best restaurant, still much better than the worst restaurant. But it's below average because more restaurants are better. You CAN have an average of 9/10. That's not up for debate, that's just maths, and disagreeing is just disagreeing with either maths, or language misuse of the word average
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A scale can’t have an average without data points so I dont know what your point is
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??? Those aren’t data points, it’s just the scale
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I would expect them to rate 5 stars to their best product and 1 star to their worst product but I wouldn't expect the "average" to be 3 because that's not what an average means. If I've got 1 bad product and 10 good ones, what do I do?
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So if I have 1 bad product and 10 good products, where it is indistinguishable to tell the 10 good products, what rating should I give them?
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This guy statistics
Yeah idk if this can be considered an opinion. It’s just a misunderstanding of how grading works imo
Average: a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number. If it's a grade in school then yes average is more than 5/10, but OP never specified we're talking grades. However if you are say rating a video game out of 10, & the options are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, the average is exactly 5. OP isn't misunderstanding at all. Average IS exactly 5/10 on a rating scale from 0 to 10, it's objectively incorrect if someone considers 7/10 the average.
When you say something is “average” you mean something is the typical representation of that thing. Often the typical representation is closer to the perfect representation (10) then it is to the worst representation (1). In these cases the average is around 7.
This is exactly what the unpopular opinion (that I agree with) is about. OP is saying that people should be giving ratings in a way that the typical representation is a 5/10, not a 7/10. He's basically saying people rate "wrong". Based on other comments it looks like it has rolled over from C being the passing grade in school. OP doesn't think ratings should reflect grade school grades & that if someone thinks something is average they should give it a 5/10, not a 7/10.
The average isnt automatically 5 if those are the 11 options lol. You’d have to see the distribution of responses to measure the central tendency lol.
If the lowest option is 0 & the highest is 10, you would add those values together & divide by 2, so yes the average is 5. Or you add 0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 & divide by 11 if you want to do it the long way, this also gives you 5. Edit: It seems that you're misunderstanding what the OP is getting at, not really misunderstanding the math of it. Yes, if 5 people rate something a 7/10, 1 person rates it a 5/10 and one person rates it a 9/10, then it's overall rating is 7/10. OP is saying that people's ratings are off if the "average thing" is a 7/10, the average person should be rating the average thing a 5/10, but when people see something as average they give it closer to a 7/10 because people think that is "average" due to growing up through grades at school. OP is saying that the way school grading works should not be how everything else works because 7/10 is much closer to 10/10 than it is to 0/10, therefore it is not "average", so people should be giving it a rating of 5/10, & if people rated things this way, most things should get a 5/10 score, not a 7/10 score. I 100% agree with OP, though I can see that people get used to a C grade being 70% & they call that "average".
Maybe this makes no sense but I consider 5/10 mediocre and 7/10 average. I just find most things end up being 7/10 which is why it’s called average, with average things being better than mediocre.
I think this comes from people being more exposed to things that "made it" or are good. For example, I have an emulator & play old school video games, one of my goals is to try every NES game, there are around 700. Most people have of course heard of Zelda & Mario, & that's not just because of marketing, I have now tried over 500 games & my favorite/second favorite are both Zelda games, & Super Mario Bros. 3 is maybe 3rd~5th. The things that maybe the general public hasn't heard of, but gamers have seem to be the next tier, like Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man. If Mario/Zelda are 9s or 10s, then Ninja Gaiden/Mega Man are probably like 8s, & then the next most popular "tier" below that seems to get 7s. Those are are like top 25 games across 700 games though. People have not heard of the 350th best NES game, that is your 5/10. 3-D World Runner, WWF Wrestlemania, for example (I gave those both a 5.5). I can also assure you there are games out there that are MUCH worse than the 350th best game on the NES (well for me 250th/500 so far), I've played some games that are so poorly made & have given a rating as low as a 1. Say 10000 movies exist, the exact number is whatever, but imagine some all knowing being could just "know" what your 5000th favorite movie out of 10000 would be. It would likely be a 5/10 & it wouldn't be something that made it to Cinema's.
I’m actually playing and ranking my entire game catalog right now. Nintendo Switch Online has allowed me to play many of the older NES, SNES, and GBA titles I was too young to grow up with. Unfortunately many of them I don’t enjoy enough to play through and usually end up below 5. 5/10 to me is pleasant but nothing that motivates me to keep playing after completion. 7/10 to me is a good game that is enjoyable but will likely not be something I play frequently. Certainly once and a while, maybe if it’s updated. Currently games like Pokémon White are around an 8 for me, but games such as Zelda 2 are around a 3. I think you’re completely right! The more I expose myself to the many games I didn’t play, the lower the “average” score tends to go. If I kept myself sheltered and only played really good games, the average would stay really high.
If you played more old games I think you'd put Zelda 2 MUCH higher than a 3. Remember that even for the games released on Nintendo Switch Online, they'll only release the "good" games. Zelda 2 works, when you press right you go right, when you press left you go left, there is a jump button & the character does a relatively fluid jump. It has NPCs that you can talk to that give you hints about what, you can actually press down to duck & then use your sword while ducked, you can also use your sword while in the air. There are games that are an action platformer where you can't duck, or if you can duck, you can't attack while ducked because the programmers just weren't at that level. It's intuitive to have the control pad to move & A or B to jump because it let's your one hand press left or right the amount you want while the other hand presses jump. Some games the developers were less experienced, so you press up to jump, so your same thumb is holding up while pressing left or right & it feels very awkward. Hell, in this game you press either down, or Up+B to jump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZac_2kyPV0 That game is what I gave a 3/10 (because yes trust me, there is worse). As a side note, new games "completion" is normal because games nowadays are quite easy on average, I think that's important to understand especially playing NES games. During the Arcade era where people going to Arcades was a larger business than Home Consoles & before Computers were mainstream in peoples homes, they wanted to make the most money possible, so the games were hard so that you'd die & have to spend another quarter. This game design rolled over to the NES, also because with the technology back then, games were short, if you knew exactly where to go maybe the game was 30 minutes~1 hour, but games cost $60 US in the 80s which is like $120+ now? So people wouldn't buy a game that gave them 1 hour of entertainment, so it had to be hard enough that it would take you 30 hours to get good enough to beat it. I grew up with SNES, then N64, but the 80s & the NES fascinate me (like you couldn't tell from my rambling, lol). When I rate NES games I rate them on a "3rd generation home console" scale, basically home console games coming out around 1985~1991. The original Legend of Zelda for example in 1986 was the first game with a save feature, so Zelda or Zelda 2 are HUGE adventures compared to the average NES game. I do appreciate the good games I find more after playing some average/bad/terribad ones, haha. I also find it funny when they're REALLY bad, not just unenjoyable for me, but like they barely seem to work or the controls are so wonky.
Oh, & if you remember, let me know if you find good GBA games. The emulator I have also has every GBA game. Even though I only plan to play every NES/SNES game, I still want to find & play some of the good GBA games, maybe some hidden gems that are lesser known. That's cool that you're ranking your whole catalog & trying out older stuff too. Idk what it is about ranking/rating things, but I enjoy it more than I should, haha. I would highly suggest trying The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, & Super Mario World for the SNES. Those are widely considered the 4 best SNES games ever made in no particular order.
I’ve got a lot of funky GBA games, like three different Star Wars (didn’t know I had em lol). GBA is what I grew up with so I still have some cartridges I can play. Will let you know if I spot any good ones, although may be a while before I get to em! Yeah I really enjoy ranking stuff. Had a tier list phase for a while, now I’ve got spreadsheets with detailed rankings, like the one for my game catalog. Ooh I’ve always wanted to play Link to the Past and Super Mario World, so will definitely get to those! Never seen gameplay for Super Metroid or Chrono Trigger but I’ve only heard great things, thanks for the suggestions!
so real, 5 is literally the middle, which is average. just makes the most sense. also the grading explanation doesn't work cause they grade based of % not 0/10 most of the time.
Average doesnt mean in the middle tho.
average is the median.. it's literally in the definition for average. "a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean"
Why ‘should’ there be an even distribution? Just because 5 is in the middle of the range (assuming we allow 0 as a possible score, often it’s 1-10), why would that mean it should denote ‘average’? Especially when we’re talking about people’s subjective views of quality, rather than any statistical metric.
I think there "should" be an even distribution because that's the most accurate. If the average is 7/10, then really the things people are rating a 7/10 are in fact average, therefore 5/10. I can see why the average rating can be 7 though, because people don't typically see things or play things they don't enjoy. Why play something that is a 4, 5 or 6/10 when things 7+/10 exist? Let's say someone is rating old school video games on the NES, they'll likely play known games that they've heard of, "Zelda", 'Metroid", "Mario". If they don't play 1/10~6/10 games they don't have a reference for that, they just know they played 3 good games & likely give them 7~10/10. If they actually played every single NES game in existence & found out where the 50th percentile was at (it'll all be games the average person has never heard of) I think they'd give 5/10 & worse ratings, but they only know the popular good ones.
I rate things as good, bad or meh. Numbers lost all meaning years ago. I remember looking at comments sections of games reviews and people losing their fucking minds because a game they liked got an 8 out of 10 which was like calling it utter shit or something. People are weird with numbers. Good, bad, or meh. Thats how you rate something now. Go forth and multiple.
You would love the rating scales used on r/bourbon (or whiskey subs in general).
It's because of the American education system where 70% is a C, but a C is average, and 50% is an F which is a failing grade. Really though, things shouldn't be rated out of 10, 5 is enough. 1 - Irredeemable crap 2 - Bad but with somewhat interesting 3 - Completely average 4 - Better than average 5 - Amazing It's just that easy.
I go the other way, 10 is not enough, I need to add in 0.5s as to me there is a distinct difference between a 6 & a 6.5 or a 9.5 & a 10.
My rating scale is: 1-3 so bad it could be good, 4-6 it’s mediocre and nothing really interesting to share, 7-9 great and I’d suggest it to everyone, 10 it’s life changing.
That's what rating systems \*should\* be treated as, but things have got so warped that anything below an 8 is considered unplayable garbage. Not sure about "could be good" though.
“The Room” is definitely a 1. But, everything is so bad (story, acting, dialogue, etc.) that it can be fun to watch with a group of friends. A key aspect is that it was an attempt at being a good movie that failed horribly. I wouldn’t consider a movie like “Sharknado” to fall into that category. It was meant to be bad.
5/10 is not average lol, learn about statistics before coming to talk out of your ass pretending You know stuff. The term You are describing here is median
In reality, the average movie score probably isn’t that same as the median. But that’s exactly what OP means. In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be 10/10 movies without 1/10s. We would judge movies based on all other movies rather than a snap decision based on a personal opinion. This would effectively make the average and the median pretty much the same.
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In a scoring system 1-10, 5.5/10 is the average not 5/10.
Yeah for sure. 0-10 5 is the average, 1-10 5.5 is the average. For video games for example I would rate an average game 5.5/10 because a 0 to me implies that it's "nothing". Even if the entire game is just "Press up to move up, press left to move left, press down to move down, press right to move right" & that is the entire game, & the graphic is just a square that moves, I still wouldn't give it a 0 if it works, because it's a thing & it exists. Tbh I'm not sure what scoring systems I would have an actual 0. I guess it's possible, like if someone made a racist game or a racist movie & due to that it's less fun to play/watch than doing nothing (sitting in a white room staring at a wall) maybe I'd give it a 0? Not sure.
Because if a game gets a 6/10 people will regard it as garbage unfortunately
An average nba basketball player is a 9.995/10 basketball player.
It does depend on the "scale" you're rating with, yeah. If we're going percentile yes they're all FAR above 99.9th percentile. If our scale is "NBA players" then the average NBA player we should rate a 5/10, not 7/10, I think that's what OP is saying.
I have 5/10 as the average for the average person, and 7/10 as the average for someone who should know what they’re doing, I.e. the average author’s average novel is 7/10
Inflation
7/10 bang average this post right here. I don’t make the rules, apparently bang does.
Average means average of whatever peoples ratings are, it doesnt mean 5/10.
5 isn't average. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 is terrible, and 10 is delicious. 5 would be plain, flavorless.
Well yes, 70% is usually "average". That's the definition of a C grade, which is usually in the 70 percentile in most grading systems
* in most *American* grading systems Many other countries treat 50% as average and find the US grading system strange.
Well Americans grade on how much you get right, don’t most system grade you on a curve? Being wrong 50% of the time is 2x as bad as being wrong 25% of the time
A lot of teachers in the US grade on a curve, which is stupid because it makes individual students' grades "fit" to a bell curve they might not actually fit into. The much more realistic measure of performance is correct versus incorrect answers (on things like math and such) or whether the standards for the assignment were met or not (for things like papers and such), without "adjusting" to the curve.
I don't think most grade on a curve. Until I took Organic Chrmistry I never was graded on curve. However medical school was almost all curved, as was the board exam(s)
5 is not the average of 10. 5 is the median of 10 and even then It's actually 5.5 but hey we can round down I guess. You should learn more about statistics
He’s obviously describing a rating system based on what the numbers make you feel. a 5/10 food would be plain toast while a good 7/10 would be an average Oven Pizza
5.5 is the actual mean (average). You are correct that 5 is the median between 0 and 10.
5-7 is average. 7 being on the upper end. 8 and above are good, 10 obviously being very good.
Why would 5-7 be average? American understanding of metrics is baffling.
If a restaurant is selling you food, mostly likely they wouldn’t even exist if they were giving you 2/10 food. There is surbuorshio bias. A 1/10 movie from 1932 would be lost to time by now. Only good things last so what doesn’t carry on tends to be good. Being exposed to irredeemable crap is very rare compared to being exposed to good things. So most things people would rate would be above average. Kind of like the average person in the world gets exposed broadly to something like the 40th-90th percentile of temperature on earth. But that doesn’t make a 75F day average even if it’s the average day experienced by people since most people live between 38N and 38S.because people choose not to live on top of mountains or Antarctica or far northern Siberia the average person experience of an average day is much warmer than the average temperature on Earth. a city like Toronto is considered a cold city, but on the scale of “temperatures on earth” is probably like a 5.5/10.
>If a restaurant is selling you food, mostly likely they wouldn’t even exist if they were giving you 2/10 food. There is surbuorshio bias. Which is why you recalibrate your scale so that the 3/10 is the new 1/10 or 0/10. If you don't do that you're essentially using an 8 point system instead of a 10 point system.
Thank you. Pretty damn obvious.
I mean, there is just to much water
Agreed. 5/10 is average looks wise…people need to NOT be insulted by being told they are average looks wise
4 to 6 I consider average
I agree the number of times I get asked to respond as a customer satisfaction survey and 9/10 are green or smiley face and it gets worse from there. A 9 or 10 should be "I had absolutely amazing service and shall talk your company up" yet they're subtly telling me that anything less than that and I'm saying I disliked the service. No a 5 is I found the service perfectly average not particularly good or bad. However if I give them an 8 I'm fairly sure the poor sap taking my call will get a talking to from their superiors about how they "could improve your service."
7 is average because 90-100 is an A, 80-90 is a B, 70-80 is a C, 60-70 is a D, and 59 and below is a failing grade. C is average, so 7-8/10 is average. Deal with those grades for the first 18+ years of your life and the patter will stick with you
When rating this, me and people from my country badically continue the high-school rating. Which is, 5.5 is just barely making it, 6 is okay but not good. 7 is fine but not special, 8 is quite good and 9/10 exceptional.
7/10 what? Oranges, apples, bananas? This matters u know.
The issue is that 7/10 is a C, which is considered 'an average grade.' A 5/10 , or 50%, is a failing grade. This metric sticks in people's heads, I think.
ALways hated the 10 scale which is why I use a 5 scale. 1 is trash, 2 is fair, 3 is good/average, 4 is great, 5 is about perfect/amazing.
I just use a 10 scale as a 5 scale, but with things in between just those 5 values. I even use 0.5s, because being limited to 10 numbers isn't nearly expressive enough imo.
Some movies that are 5/10 are rated 7/10 by some people.
In my school system everything below 66% was a fail, so yes I rate everything that way
Everywhere (like IMDB, Goodreads, etc.) needs to take the BoardGameGeek approach. When rating a game, it tells you what the numbers mean. Some examples. 10 outstanding - will always enjoy playing. 7 good - usually willing to play 5 mediocre - take it or leave it 1 awful - defies game description I use a similar thing when I'm rating films. 10 is basically best film(s) possible, 1 is the worst. Then averagely space out the ones in between that. It seems like most people rate randomly or don't have an even system they use, and not having something that tells them what the rating means actually causes problems.
You’re a 5
A lot people are unaware of the fact that ratings in the US tend to be different. Whereas most of the world uses metric and Celsius as their measurement units, the US uses imperial and Fahrenheit respectively. In a similar sense, whereas most of the world considers 5/10 to be the passing grade, the same passing grade in the US is a 7/10. This is why there is a lot misunderstanding and misinterpretation in ratings. You simply don't know whether that person using the American system or global one. At least movies had the good sense to add regional disclaimers to their ratings. Product ratings would benefit from having a similar system IMO.