Apr 25, 2008 5:42 PM
An Analysis of Rating Trends on MAL
Not that anyone will probably be interested in this but I was curious. The other day, I noticed someone was objecting to the fact that their favorite anime had an average rating of "only" 7 out of 10. At first sight, this seemed strange to me, since doesn't a rating of 7 technically mean "good?" While most rational people might not think twice about a random complaint from some guy on the internet, I am unfortunately cursed with an unnatural obsession of statistics. Therefore, after thinking about it I realized two things.
First, most people tend to only watch shows they are pretty sure they will be interested in, and more often than not these instincts are correct. Therefore people will naturally give out more good ratings than bad. Second, some people (or at least people like me) may be subconsciously influenced by common rating systems they grew up with. Where I went to highschool a 6 out of 10 was a borderline failing score, so I tend to apply that same scale to other things without thinking about it, as it shaped the development of much my adolescent years.
Anyway, I randomly selected 30 anime lists from this site and from those I randomly chose a sample set of 1000 anime ratings. (Like I said, I am dangerously obsessed with statistics) Then I ran a histogram analysis on that set of ratings. This is not actually as hard as it sounds, especially if you have a moderate amount of experience with Excel. It took me about 15 minutes. Here are my findings:
Rating_______Frequency
1____________________8
2___________________13
3___________________13
4___________________35
5___________________58
6__________________102
7__________________168
8__________________195
9__________________217
10_________________191
So as predicted the ratings are skewed toward the upper scores. The most common rating was 9 and the average rating was about 7.7. What do you know, the complainer guy was right! At least on MAL, a show given an overall rating of 7 is actually below average. Happily for me, this gives me a whole new range of people to complain at when they don't rate my favorite shows as I as I think they should! [just kidding :) ]
EDIT: Darn, anyone know if there's a better way of doing tables with this thing?
First, most people tend to only watch shows they are pretty sure they will be interested in, and more often than not these instincts are correct. Therefore people will naturally give out more good ratings than bad. Second, some people (or at least people like me) may be subconsciously influenced by common rating systems they grew up with. Where I went to highschool a 6 out of 10 was a borderline failing score, so I tend to apply that same scale to other things without thinking about it, as it shaped the development of much my adolescent years.
Anyway, I randomly selected 30 anime lists from this site and from those I randomly chose a sample set of 1000 anime ratings. (Like I said, I am dangerously obsessed with statistics) Then I ran a histogram analysis on that set of ratings. This is not actually as hard as it sounds, especially if you have a moderate amount of experience with Excel. It took me about 15 minutes. Here are my findings:
Rating_______Frequency
1____________________8
2___________________13
3___________________13
4___________________35
5___________________58
6__________________102
7__________________168
8__________________195
9__________________217
10_________________191
So as predicted the ratings are skewed toward the upper scores. The most common rating was 9 and the average rating was about 7.7. What do you know, the complainer guy was right! At least on MAL, a show given an overall rating of 7 is actually below average. Happily for me, this gives me a whole new range of people to complain at when they don't rate my favorite shows as I as I think they should! [just kidding :) ]
EDIT: Darn, anyone know if there's a better way of doing tables with this thing?
Posted by
UserZero
| Apr 25, 2008 5:42 PM |
2 comments
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UserZero | Apr 26, 2008 6:08 PM
Yes I do mean "rating." Thanks, I fixed it.
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jamesx33 | Apr 26, 2008 3:23 PM
I'm assuming when you say ranking, you mean rating? You know though, most people... myself included.. have very stubborn and impatient tastes and tend to drop an anime that may immediately look bad. That's pretty much why we don't really see many animes listed with ratings 6 and under because they're usually just dropped without a rating. For me, and I'm pretty sure for most others, people only would continue watching an anime worthy to be rated 7 or higher otherwise... anything that would be rated 6 and under is a waste of time even IF it is an ALRIGHT series. People wouldn't want to waste almost 12 total hours to watch a little above average series, they want to spend that 12 hours watching something spectacular... Otherwise, people with more stricter ratings have their own standards like rating an "average" series a 5 or 6, which should technhically be the correct standard but we people are too devoted and lenient in giving high scores to animes because we just want to see the anime receive more than what it deserves after watching it :( |