How granular are your ratings ?

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livelove
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by livelove »

thanks for the detailed and very helpful explanation, SpikyCactus

PrestoBix
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by PrestoBix »

livelove wrote:
PrestoBix wrote:The better a movie is the easier it is for me to be precise, and vice versa. When I know a film is going to be in the 90 to 100 range, it's easy for me to pick a number. But when a movie is in the sub-50 range, it's harder for me to pick it out
couldn't this be a sign that your ratings are skewed towards the top? 70 is only in your 25%. Which means that you have to cram 75% of your films in the 70-100 range. The consequence is that you need a very fine granularity there (1 step), whereas this 1-step-granularity is way too fine in the lower range, as you point out yourself. This is a consequence of the skewed distribution. If you "stretched" your ratings more to the bottom (more towards a Bell curve) — or in other words: be stricter with your ratings — you could satisfactorily use a lower granularity for the entire 0-100 range and encounter less difficulties in picking the right number.
Image

PrestoBix wrote:often I just say 2.9, sounds good
2.9 out of 100? What does that mean?


Oh, I rate out of 10 to the decimal point, so I meant 29. 101 options either way.

My ratings are absolutely skewed towards the upper end, I think my average rating is 7.7 (77) or so. But, I believe this is because I only watch movies that I believe I will like. I don't try to watch everything. I'm more concerned with watching old classics than every Hollywood release of the current year. So, I think if I actually watched bad movies, then my average would be around 5. I was thinking about using the random movie button and watching the first dozen movies it recommends and seeing if it were so. But, that seems a bit over the top.

Regardless, it doesn't really matter where the center of my curve is, since there are 30 different options to differentiate with just in the 70-100 range. As for uncertainty in the lower range, it's not that a truly can't differentiate, it's that I truly don't care. When I enter my ratings into letterboxd, anything below 50/100 I mark as a 0.5/5, and I'm happy with that idea, because out of the films I've rated 0.5/5, one might be significantly better than another, but they're both just awful so bothering with any comparisons isn't really worth the time or effort. Anything below a 50/100 is simply best forgotten.

I've worked both as a statistician and a film critic, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley. Cheers.

livelove
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by livelove »

PrestoBix wrote:As for uncertainty in the lower range, it's not that a truly can't differentiate, it's that I truly don't care. When I enter my ratings into letterboxd, anything below 50/100 I mark as a 0.5/5, and I'm happy with that idea, because out of the films I've rated 0.5/5, one might be significantly better than another, but they're both just awful so bothering with any comparisons isn't really worth the time or effort. Anything below a 50/100 is simply best forgotten.
It matters for your TCI though, because for Criticker the 40 point difference between a 5 vs 45 score or a 10 vs 50 score counts just as much as the 40 point difference between your 100 point score and another user's 60 point score. In other words, a 40 point difference (between you and another user) for a bad film matters just as much as a 40 point difference for a good film. So if you are imprecise for your lower ratings, you'll hurt your overall accuracy just as much as if you were inaccurate in rating your top films.

livelove
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by livelove »

VinegarBob wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2016 5:16 am
Perfectly reasonable, all of this. I feel though that the finer the scale gets and the more you're comparing films with one another the more it comes down to what mood you're in at the time. Also it can be quite tricky to compare how much you like one film relative to another when the two are so different from each other. So I tend to just assign a rating on my scale and leave it at that. However it is quite interesting to then go back and look at the rankings and see what films end up in the same bucket. For instance I just had a look at my 75 bucket and there, sitting next to each other are Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Post Tenebras Lux :lol: Do I like them both equally? I guess...it really depends on my mood at the time I'm asked. They're both as good as 75 and not as good as 80, so they have 5 points of ratings to swim around in together to account for my mood at any given time. ;)
I completely agree on all counts. I get the mood-dependent part very much.

And it also depends on what you remember from a movie ... sometimes I happen to feel like a particular movie watched say 2 years ago should get a score of 60. And then I think about it a little more and all of a sudden I remember other scenes or aspects of the movie I liked and am thus able to agree with my score of 65 or 70.

SinnerMa
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by SinnerMa »

Difficult question as I think site scores too high inherantly, also I only like the written reviews, the general score is mostly ignored except where there is not much info (often the case as I have a strong bias towards older [and Japanese] cinema). It's the synopsis that attracts most of my attention -

I have ranges as I think about it where
Complete yuk = approx 22
Some redeeming qualites but I generally disliked = anywhere in the 30's/40's
Disliked but confused as to why exactly = 50's
Weeelll OK but not wanna watch again = 60's
Is OK, not a total waste but not again = 70's
Liked this = 80's and up

gogolit
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by gogolit »

A 20pt scale is probably a good one, annything less than that ends you up with LOT of films on the same score that really shouldn't be, but honestly after a lot of trial and error I do think 100pt scale is the best in the end when you're rating 1000+ films.

MontyCircus
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Re: How granular are your ratings ?

Post by MontyCircus »

I vote on a 5-star system with no half stars.

"20" if I hate a film, or got nothing out of a film. I ask myself "But I liked the part when...", and if I can't think of anything, then it goes here.

"40" if I didn't like it, or thought it was okay but wouldn't recommend it.

"60" if I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

"80" if I loved it to bits! It's fantastic! One of my very favourites of the year!

"100" if it's one of my very favourite films of all-time.

If I did any more categories than that, it would be too confusing. For example, weeks after I see and rate something, I very often remember what I rated it. If I had 10 categories I wouldn't be able to remember that even a couple of days later.

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