Re: internal representation of scores (was Re: [Heartlogic-dev] wiki feedback)

[William L. Jarrold]

On Thu, 19 May 2005, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-05-18 at 18:51 -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > On Tue, 17 May 2005, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> > > You wrote:
> > > > The below is Joshua's example and I find it confusing. E.g. what does
> > > > "stats are positive" mean?
> > >
> > > In this context, positive means believable and negative means
> > > unbelievable.  Internally, the Likert 1-5 scale is converted into a
> > > [-1,1] range.  Hence, it won't matter internally if we start playing
> > > with the ideas mentioned on your WhatScaleToHaveUsersRateOn page.
> > > Everything boils down to [-1,1].
> >
> > This is true if all of our rating schemes involve a fixed range.
> >
> > But, if we ever go to a scheme where a score could be e.g. from pos
> > infinity and/or to negative infinity then this scheme won't work.
> >
> > I like storing the raw rating numbers as it is an automatic debugging
> > device, automatically keeps track of what ratings we allowed.
> >
> > Normmalizing is importannt at the data analysis stage.
> >
> > For naive users, the grid would be more sensible with raw data.  Many
> > scientists/engineers don't even know what normalization is.  Plus the
> > word is ambiguous - could be guassian, linear, etc.
>
> I'm getting irritated by this thread.
>
> Part of the problem is that I have omitted keys and legends on various
> screens.  That's my fault.

So, well I see on the rumination items you have stuff like...

We have collected 7 ratings so far (including yours).
The average believability rating is 4.14 on a scale of 1 (highly 
unbelievable) to 5 (highly believable).

...so the "legend and keys" stuff is at least sorta okay there.

Shoot, I tried to get to some of your story things to see how the
legned is there.  However, I had done a lot of items already and and it 
would just say "You are done."  For testing purposes, can we have 
something that allows us to repeat?  (I tried loging out and login in
again and then hit the "rate it" button as per a prior email but
it just said, "You are done. Please try again later.").

So, instead hit thhe browser back button a buncha times.  I noticed that
the there is no legend on the joshau story pages.  So is a key to the 
numbers in thhe table, I assume this is something you are intending to 
add?

> However, arguing about the internal representation of data seems utterly
> tangential.  If you want to change the internal representation then,
> hey, go ahead.  The code is licensed under the GPL.  Patches welcome.
> However, I would rather spend time on more important aspects of our
> research.
>
> I have added your objection to the wiki

Good idea!

I hope you don't mind me moving this part of the wiki to a new wiki page 
called WhatScaleToHaveUsersRateOn.  On this new page, I added my concerns
and then I added...

...however, he accepts Joshua's decree in the interest of moving forward 
with other more important issues.

> so that you can properly place
> the blame on me if this design decision turns out to be wrong.

> I hope this is the end of this thread.

I think so yes.

Bill

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