Talk:Metacritic

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Higher than high[edit]

Our article states, in the lead and Metascores section, that the subject uses a weighted arithmetic mean. Looking at the six The Last Rocket critic scores on their website (archived version), apparently Metascores can be higher than even the highest individual critic review score. Critics scored Takeoff's album 80, 80, 80, 78, 77, and 75. Yet the Metascore is 82. Speculation: extra points are given if all reviews are positive - perhaps only if they are 75 or higher. --2001:1C06:19CA:D600:4C65:D201:7C31:2C5E (talk) 18:33, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Metacritic has an explanation for this:

In addition, for our movie and music sections, all of the weighted averages are normalized before generating the METASCORE. To put it another way that should be familiar to anyone who has taken an exam in high school or college, all of our movies and albums are graded on a curve. Thus the METASCORE may be higher or lower than the true weighted average of the individual reviews, thanks to this normalization calculation. Normalization causes the scores to be spread out over a wider range, instead of being clumped together. Generally, higher scores are pushed higher, and lower scores are pushed lower.

Dexxor (talk) 09:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I misunderstand your reaction, you missed my point. I already stated that it uses a weighted arithmetic mean, which is different from the "true weighted average" (as you quote), since that would be the arithmetic mean. In other words, I was already aware that some data points contribute more than others. However, what I wrote is that apparently, somehow, scores can be pushed so high that they are above even the highest individual score. --2001:1C06:19CA:D600:6050:8C06:DA00:38A7 (talk) 12:55, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]