

Our critics appear to be less educated than our fans - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/are-the-critics-of-priceonomics-actually-just/

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nathan_long
In case you're taking this seriously, consider other possible explanations.
Maybe more eloquent people are less likely to write negative reviews in
general, not just for this book. Maybe feeling negative makes a person less
eloquent. Maybe this book was marketed to a group of people who are generally
educated but gullible when it comes to the subject matter.

It could be that their critics are idiots, but this isn't much evidence. (And
I'm pretty sure they're joking.)

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bduerst
A way to test this hypothesis would be to look at the range of star reviews
that the reviewer has given, and see if "higher education" reviewers do in
fact give more positive, optimistic reviews on a whole.

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rogerbinns
If you are giving a one star review then you are likely in a situation where
the item has wasted your time, and frustrated/annoyed/disappointed you. That
is not conducive to good writing. It would be better to check the reading
level of reviews given by the same person against other products, as well as
the scores to get a clearer view of them.

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mc32
If the statistics significance is small due to a paucity of poor reviews, why
not apply the test to other books on Amazon, or other products altogether?

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bduerst
Good idea, but they're assuming their product is good. What if other products
are bad?

The 'intelligent' reviewers may write one star reviews on other books that are
legitimately bad books.

If anything, you could use this API to calculate a "True" amazon book review,
in which you could identify the reading level of the reviewers and weight
their # star review accordingly. I might give a crack at this later because I
spend so much time trying to decipher Amazon's reviews regardless.

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mc32
A few things come to mind. Are the reviews of more proficient (educated, as
determined by their algo) writers more accurate overall? That's to say are
their bad reviews of products as accurate as their good reviews, if we track
people across products. Or do good writers avoid writing bad reviews? Are the
reviews of poor writers who write good reviews any less reliable?

And can they apply this to Netflix?

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vishaldpatel
Great article! Really makes you think about the 2 people that give an
otherwise 5-star item a 1 star, bringing it's rating down to 4.5 stars. The
thing is, I tend to read over those reviews because of all the bots and hired
people / friends that are padding the 5-star reviews.

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thejteam
One thing I should point out is that the readability formulas that they used
were not designed for short form text like reviews. Most of them were designed
for text that is at least 100 words.

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drawkbox
Good point, maybe bad reviews should have a length requirement. Might be more
constructive or get rid of the 1-star reviews like "didn't work", "couldn't
download" for apps/games as well.

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belorn
What is the incentives to write a long well thought out and interesting
negative review on amazon? I would guess that while criticism tend to end up
as blog posts, positive reviews end up on amazon because people want to share
a positive experience with others.

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long
This reminded me of the style of the Cards Against Humanity folks, i.e.,
irreverent and hilarious

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SilasX
They seem to be proud of how 4/5 star reviewer are more intelligent[1] than
1-3.

They de-emphasize how 2-star reviewers are more intelligent than 3-star
reviewers, or how their readership will be skewed toward those who already
liked their work.

[1] to the extent measured by this proxy

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dang
We changed the over-the-top article title to the slightly less baity chart
caption.

