MyCatholicSource.com - 'Quick Help' Page: 'Funny Math' (Amz. Reviews)

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We understand the confusion. Rather than using 'actual math' with respect to our book & app reviews, A mazon may make their own calculations ('funny math'). In our experience as of the time of this writing, the 'funny math' they have employed has almost never been in our favor (or never, as we have yet to notice any going in our favor). Rather, we have noticed that lower ratings (1-4 star ratings) have generally/often been overstated and 5 star ratings have generally/often been understated. For example, consider the following 7 illustrations... [Note: If images herein appear too small, try zooming up the display in your browser.]

They admit on their site that they do not use "a simple average" (i.e. actual math) to calculate, but state that their calculations consider other things (e.g. how recent the review is, whether item was purchased on their site). However, the pattern in our case has been fairly consistent, as shown above – again NOT in our favor, with A mazon assigning lower weight to five-star reviews, and assigning higher weight to reviews under five stars. In other words, 1-4 star ratings have generally/often been overstated and 5 star ratings have generally/often been understated. Visually, besides smaller percentages & smaller bars for 5-star ratings AND larger percentages & larger bars for 1-4 star ratings, fewer stars display overall. In our opinion, this has occurred whether reviews were older or newer and regardless of where items were purchased (in our case, we 'only' sold certain items on their site). Interestingly, as of the time of this writing, we have only found instances of 1-4 star ratings being inflated & we have NOT noticed a single case of 5-star ratings being inflated – so the system seems inherently biased against the 5-star ratings. Otherwise shouldn't we expect the inflation to benefit us sometimes?

While we apparently can't do anything about this 'injustice' at this time, their customers may be able to change things if enough of them complain directly to A mazon.

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