Well, at this point the issue becomes who’s looking at your rating. This “additional piece of information” exists only for people who have a sufficiently large sample of your previous ratings so they understand where the latest rating fits in the overall shape of all your ratings.
Consider this example: I come up to you and ask “So, how was the movie?”. You answer “I give it a 6 out of 10″. Fine. I have some vague idea of what you mean. Now we wave a magic wand and bifurcate reality.
In branch 1 you then add “The distribution of my ratings follows the distribution of movie quality, savvy?” and let’s say I’m sufficiently statistically savvy to understand that. But… does it help me? I don’t know the distribution of movie quality. it’s probably bell-shaped, maybe, but not quite normal if only because it has to be bounded, I have no idea if its skewed, etc.
In branch 2 you then add “The rating of 6 means I rate the movie to be in the sixth decile”. Ah, that’s much better. I now know that out of 10 movies that you’ve seen five were probably worse and three were probably better. That, to me, is a more useful piece of information.
Well, at this point the issue becomes who’s looking at your rating. This “additional piece of information” exists only for people who have a sufficiently large sample of your previous ratings so they understand where the latest rating fits in the overall shape of all your ratings.
Consider this example: I come up to you and ask “So, how was the movie?”. You answer “I give it a 6 out of 10″. Fine. I have some vague idea of what you mean. Now we wave a magic wand and bifurcate reality.
In branch 1 you then add “The distribution of my ratings follows the distribution of movie quality, savvy?” and let’s say I’m sufficiently statistically savvy to understand that. But… does it help me? I don’t know the distribution of movie quality. it’s probably bell-shaped, maybe, but not quite normal if only because it has to be bounded, I have no idea if its skewed, etc.
In branch 2 you then add “The rating of 6 means I rate the movie to be in the sixth decile”. Ah, that’s much better. I now know that out of 10 movies that you’ve seen five were probably worse and three were probably better. That, to me, is a more useful piece of information.
I understand and concede to the better logic. This provides greater insight on why the original attempt to use these ratings failed.