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Reviews

“There are 600+ reviews 4star reviews”- an observation in Yelp

Today I went to breakfast in Austin.  Before going there, I wanted to see what great French bakery restaurants there were.  So I turned to Yelp.

While looking through the reviews I noticed this one restaurant that had an enormous number of reviews.  My thought was 600+ reviewers can not be wrong.  To me these reviews are no different than passing a restaurant that is overflowing with people.   All those people can not be wrong.  Well, I have to say that my breakfast was just slightly better than average.  The coffee was great but the food was not the best.  So should I take the time to write an average review.  I won’t. 

Maybe that is the problem.?  People that have great or extremely poor experiences feel compelled to comment.  The rest of us that have an average experience do not.  This seriously skews the ratings. 

We can probably assume that 20% of the reviewers had a bad experience and 80% a great one. 

If we do the math for a 100 reviewers: (on scale 1-bad 5-great) and 100 average reviewers that did not comment.

NewAverage100= (20*1+80*5+100*3)/200=3.4  in other words slightly above the average score of 3.

Similarly for 600 users, 120(20% negative), 480 positive(80%), with 600 average no comments.

   NewAverage600= (120*1+480*5+600*3)/1200=3.6  in other words  above the average score of 3.

So with 600 reviews the numbers show that I should have a better than average experience.  This was the case: slightly better than average.

I believe that we should take the time to provide average reviews.  This way we will get a better feeling for the reality before we experience it. 

Today’s question is:

“Have you ever taken the time to turn in an average review?”