Talk:Robert Langdon (franchise)

Problematic averaging

In the article's "Critical and public response" section, there was a problematic "Average" row seen here that simplistically comes up with figures based on adding up the numbers and dividing by the number of films, with zero regard for weighting, which produces no meaningful reflection of the overall critical average. This is not basic arithmetic, which is allowed, like adding up box office figures. Essentially, this approach fails to be obvious and correct, and therefore is not a meaningful reflection of the "average" reception. Reception is subjective, and thus the aggregate scores are subjective, and there cannot be an objective overall score. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:34, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I think this goes beyond WP:CALC. Like you say, there are weighting issues which is probably why RT/Metacritic don't provide series averages themselves. I think this crosses the line into WP:Original research. Betty Logan (talk) 19:51, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. I saw your removals of similar items on several film articles and even with my wiki table dysfunctions (ie just looking at the code for them hurts my eyes) it was obvious immediately why you were removing. Millahnna (talk) 20:02, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree that this crosses into WP:OR. There are many ways to compute an average and even more to weight it, and picking which one is hardly a routine choice. And as you say, the individual scores are subjective, so any average is meaningless anyway. Daß Wölf 00:38, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I would have thought about commending you on the D part of WP:BRD by starting this discussion, but it doesn't seem that you still do not get the R part for reverting. Such is life. It may be the fact that I'm studying maths, who knows, but there's only one way to calculate an average, unweighted and all. If one were to add weighting, then yes, that would be OR, unless there was a source for it. However, basic arithmetic of calculating an average is not against WP:CALC. -- Alex^TW 01:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

It is original research regardless. The point is that a straightforward average is misleading. Let's say you have a film that got 100% with 100 reviews and its sequel got 20% with 2 reviews. To say that the pair got 60% overall is nonsensical. Weighing the average would actually make it closer in general, but the fact that the scores are based on individual reviews means that we are incorrectly spreading out judgment of one film to the other films. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:33, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

What Erik is basically saying is that the averages alter the meaning of the percentages. The percentage represents the share of positive reviews, so 60% of 200 reviews would mean 120 reviews are positive. However, once you average that among the films a 60% average of 500 reviews does not necessarily indicate that 300 of the 500 reviews were positive. The arithmetic is permitted by CALC, but breaking the link between the percentage and the share of positive reviews is OR. On a sidenote it is not immediately obvious how the average Cinemascore is calcuated either: are they converted to numbers, averaged, and then converted back, or is the mode or median taken? Betty Logan (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Questionable categorization as a horror film series

In the category section, "[h]orror film series" is one of the categories listed. While I haven't seen any of these films or read the books they're based on, they don't strike me as horror films. Could anyone please tell me if I should remove the category? (Edit: Changed "...they don't strike me as horror films/novels" to "they don't strike me as horror films", since I didn't realize that they "these films" and "they" referred to the same word; sorry about that.) (Edit: Sorry to be condescending by stating my error in the previous edit as well.) (Edit: It I figured it would be condescending to me because my error seemed obvious to me; sorry also to state the obvious in this edit note, and for all of this in general.)--Thylacine24 (talk) 01:15, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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