Bob Miller wrote: > Advanced Topics > -------- ------ > > After we listed a bunch of topics, I asked each person to rank > his four favorites. Then we (a) counted the votes each topic > got, and (b) averaged the rankings. So a high number of votes > is good, and a low ranking is good. > > Votes Rank Topic Presenters > ----- ---- ----- ---------- > > 8 2.1 mysql/php (??) > 5 2.8 cvs (joseph) > 5 2 backups (bob) > 4 2.8 pf openbsd (tim) > 4 2 apache config (larry) > 4 1.5 netfilter firewall (cory) > 3 3 latex (neil) > 2 3 vpn/freeswan (cory)
There has been some confusion over how to read this table. The second row says that five people ranked CVS among their four favorites. Those five people ranked it 2.8 on average (actually 2.75), where 1 is first choice, 4 is fourth choice. It's a kind of preference voting. So, the higher the number in the Votes column, the more popular the topic. The lower the number in the Rank column, the higher the interest in the topic among people who voted for it. Does that make sense? You could derive a single number for each topic by dividing the number of votes by the ranking. E.g., cvs is 5 / 2.8 = 1.8. Doing that gives the following scores. Score Votes/Rank Topic Presenters 2.9 8/2.1 mysql/php (??) 2.7 4/1.5 netfilter firewall (cory) 2.5 5/2 backups (bob) 2 4/2 apache config (larry) 1.8 5/2.8 cvs (joseph) 1.4 4/2.8 pf openbsd (tim) 1 3/3 latex (neil) 0.7 2/3 vpn/freeswan (cory) In the near future, we'll try to get an ongoing poll area on the web site where we can all vote for additional topics. -- Bob Miller K<bob> kbobsoft software consulting http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
