Hi,

I am in a process of creating a site. In this site users will post reviews.
My question is what algorithm/calculation  to use.
A user will post a review and will give it a general rate (1 to 5) and
then the readers of the site will vote if this review was helpful or
unhelpful.

I am looking for algorithm that will take those two factors into consideration.


Question are welcomed

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Request for Question Clarification by efn-ga on 05 Feb 2006 09:04 PST

What do you want the algorithm to do?

If the inputs to the algorithm are the reviewer's rating and the
readers' votes, what output do you want from the algorithm?

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Clarification of Question by troy1-ga on 07 Feb 2006 14:27 PST

I was able to find an answer in another source.
Thanks for the effor.

Okay, let's say your site is somewhere for people to review books.

The average rating of a book can then be defined, using your listed
criteria, as the averaged sum of all individual reviews, FACTORING IN
THE WEIGHTING OF EACH REVIEW.

In other words, each individual review of a book raises or diminishes
the average to a degree determined by how helpful it is deemed.

So, let's try some pseudo-code for this, using basic ECMA-Script type language:


totalbooks = 100;
totalratings = 0;

for (i=1;i<=totalbooks,i++){
	totalratings += rating[i];
}

averageunweightedrating = totalratings/totalbooks;
totalweightedratings = totalratings;

for (i=1;i<=totalbooks,i++){
	totalweightedratings -= (averageunweightedrating - rating[i])/(6-relevance[i]);
}

averageweightedrating = totalweightedratings/totalbooks;


I can knock together an actual code example in Flash Actionscript with
a visual output if you need ;-)

asqus23-ga,
it looks interesting what you wrote - but cannot understand it....
( i will give the code to the programmer..)
I want to know also the logic.
Thanks,
troy1