How Not To Sort By Average Rating

Re:How Not To Sort By Average Rating by tptacek on Thursday February 12, 2009 @03:23PM (#478923)

You didn't laugh out loud when you got to "the correct solution"?

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Re:How Not To Sort By Average Rating by timr on Thursday February 12, 2009 @04:02PM (#478980)

I did. The way it was presented was rather classic.

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Re:How Not To Sort By Average Rating by icey on Thursday February 12, 2009 @04:49PM (#479044)

I've clearly missed something. Other than being a baroque way to generate an approximation that doesn't really mean much, I guess I don't see what makes it so funny?

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Re:How Not To Sort By Average Rating by timr on Thursday February 12, 2009 @06:01PM (#479135)

Well, with the caveat that the surest way to kill humor is to explain it, I thought it was funny because option 1 was a super-simple equation, option 2 was a super-simple equation, and the "right" answer was Quantum Rocket Surgery.

(I suppose it's funnier if you've done research. Roughly 88.69% of all research literature is some dude trying to "improve" a simple model with pages of mathematics. Not that this guy was wrong -- it was just evocative.)

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Re:How Not To Sort By Average Rating by icey on Thursday February 12, 2009 @07:26PM (#479229)

Alright thanks... To be fair, I am really really bad at picking up humor online. I have some kind of internet autism or something.

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