Words Of Wisdom on 10 February 2009
| TruckOSaurus said: From what I remember from my stats courses back in college, before compiling data for averages (like on Metacritic) you're supposed to remove a set of data from the top and the bottom to ensure extremes won't go and screw your results. I've always wondered why the hell Metacritic doesn't do this. Even only taking out only the top and bottom 2 reviews would ensure a more accurate average for all games. |
Those are called outliers and they're removed pretty much to avoid skewing the average.
Anyway, if Metacritic did remove the outliers then reviews would actively attempt to avoid being the outlier which leads to more dishonest reviewing. Personally, I like seeing low reviews because it tells me that someone was totally unimpressed with a game.
