Easily Distracted by Bright, Shiny Objects...
What's that you say? Forget all the boring numbers, you want to see pretty pictures! You got it! Many thanks to my helper with the kick-butt charting programs, who is just as happy staying anonymous.
These charts were last updated on 17 January, 2001.
Ratings Across the Ages
This is a straight graph of the ratings episodes have
received in order of airing. The trend showing the
average rating makes its highest arc in season two and
dips lowest during season five.
Disagreement Across the Ages
This chart tracks how much we've disagreed about episodes. (For those who know statistics, it's a measure of the standard deviation of each episode's ratings.) The trend this time climbed up to season three, calmed down a bit in season four, then spiked higher in season five.
Raters Across the Ages
Again across time from left to right, this chart shows the number of people who have submitted ratings for the episodes. The trend does a pretty dramatic spike, climbing to mid-season three, then dropping. But this chart is a bit deceptive; don't forget that later episodes have had less time to accumulate voters, so the trail-off for the past season or so is to be expected.
The next three charts take a different approach; instead of plotting a statistic against time, they compare two different statistics. A blue dot represents each episode. There are no trend lines, but there's a note in the corner to help you pick out the trend the chart shows, if any.
Disagreement Meets Ratings
This chart compares how much we disagree (the vertical line) with
the episode's rating (the horizontal line). Each blue dot is the
rating and the disagreement/standard deviation of an episode. There's
a definite slope from the top left to the bottom right, which means
that in general, the better an episode is rated, the more people
agree on that rating. And conversely, the lower an episode is rated,
the more people disagree. So we generally agree on the ones we like the
most, but scatter when we come to the ones we don't like.
Disagreement Meets Raters
This time the chart compares each episode's disagreement/deviation with the number of raters it has. The trend is less dramatic on this one, but shows slightly that as the number of raters increases for an episode, its disagreement/deviation lessens. As more people give their rating, the scores vary less widely.
Raters Meets Ratings
Finally, a chart that compares the number of people who have rated an episode to its rating. This time, the dots are all over the map; there isn't any trend that relates the number of raters to its rating. In other words, as more people vote on an episode, it doesn't tend to get a better or worse rating.
Rate-A-Xena is brought to you by the letter omega, the number IV, and Beth Griese. Feel free to send any comments or questions my way!
Return to Rate-A-Xena.