On the ‘Yelp’ examples:
I looked at the yelp.com website, and it appears that it lets you rate things on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.
A thing with 200 reviews and an average of 4.75 seems like an example of humongous ballot-stuffing. Either that or nearly everyone on yelp.com votes 4 or 5 nearly all the time, so either way the example seems a bad one.
Holden wrote that a priori a restaurant with a Yelp average of 4.75 coming from 200 reviews is probably better than a restaurant with a Yelp average of 5 coming from 3 reviews. Do you disagree?
I agree that the possibility of ballot stuffing and the possibility that the fraction of consumers who write Yelp reviews varies with the quality of their experience complicates the situation. But my intuition here is the same as Holden’s.
In any case, the question of whether the example at hand is a good one is irrelevant to the point of post where the example appears: scant additional that an opportunity is excellent doesn’t reflect as well on an opportunity than abundant additional evidence that an opportunity is very good.
On the ‘Yelp’ examples: I looked at the yelp.com website, and it appears that it lets you rate things on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.
A thing with 200 reviews and an average of 4.75 seems like an example of humongous ballot-stuffing. Either that or nearly everyone on yelp.com votes 4 or 5 nearly all the time, so either way the example seems a bad one.
Holden wrote that a priori a restaurant with a Yelp average of 4.75 coming from 200 reviews is probably better than a restaurant with a Yelp average of 5 coming from 3 reviews. Do you disagree?
I agree that the possibility of ballot stuffing and the possibility that the fraction of consumers who write Yelp reviews varies with the quality of their experience complicates the situation. But my intuition here is the same as Holden’s.
In any case, the question of whether the example at hand is a good one is irrelevant to the point of post where the example appears: scant additional that an opportunity is excellent doesn’t reflect as well on an opportunity than abundant additional evidence that an opportunity is very good.