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runarorama / runarorama.github.com

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A better reading list with Mathematica #13

Open runarorama opened 9 years ago

paulp commented 9 years ago

Stephanie Shun suggests using the percentage of 5-star ratings as the relevant metric rather than the average rating

I don't know if book reviews are subject to the same biases as are (at least) Chrome extensions and IOS apps, but in my experience the number of 5-star reviews floats wildly depending on how hard the developer pushes you to provide them with a 5-star rating. This is on my mind at the moment because I have a chrome extension with a permanent, prominently located "rate us 5 stars" button. Given its placement I expect most of its 5-star reviews are misclicks.

runarorama commented 9 years ago

@paulp Most books don't have a "click here to give me a 5-star review" button (yet), but I know that some publishers will manufacture 5-star ratings as part of their process. I'm hoping that will be caught by (a) the fact that nothing gets on my list unless I want to read it regardless of rating, and (b) a shitty book will get drowned with negative reviews eventually (unless it's exceedingly obscure).