On Sat, 22 Dec 2001 09:02:23 -0500, "Ralph Noble" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
... > A local newspaper asked its readers to rank the year's Top 10 news stories > by completing a ballot form. There were 10 choices on all but one ballot > (i.e. local news, sports news, business news, etc.), and you had to rank > those from 1 to 10 without duplicating any of your choices. One was their > top pick, 10 their lowest. Only one ballot had more than 10 choices, because > of the large number of local news stories you could choose from. > > > > I would have thought if you only had 10 choices and had to rank from 1 to > 10, then you'd count up all the stories that got the readers' Number One > vote and which ever story got the most Number One votes would have been > declared the winner. [ ... ] I have read three good responses. I want to mention that what you describe is just like the polls used in college sports, where the coaches or media each vote (coaches do one poll; media do another) for "Who is number 1." And they typically do report what you ask for, the number of #1 votes, in addition to the total (which does not have to agree). Thinking of other ratings with rankings: Is it "Places rated almanac"? - that annually lists numbers for 120 or 250 American cities. They do another simple averaging of ranks, across their 10 or so categories. I remember some public discussion of how arbitrary that was, and how it tends to reward 'consistent mediocrity.' (The first time they did this, Pittsburgh <home> was near the top, so I have noticed later discussion.) That discussion also pointed out that the results were *usually* not *greatly* different if you chose another weighting system. And the better advice was that any interested person should look at the separate categories, and choose the few that matter to themselves. -- Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
