Holly Jahangiri
1 min readSep 21, 2022

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We don't often think about confirmation bias in data; data is supposed to be objective evidence. But it's not, always. "Ratings" are SO subjective and even the individual thought that provides the "logic" behind choosing a number is very different from one person to another. The real meat is in the text, and the TEXT will tell a different story. I know people who give five stars to make people (AND EVEN COMPANIES) feel good about themselves, and I know people who NEVER give five stars because "nobody's perfect." Same with the low ratings - often, a one-star and a two-star is the same thing. A one-star can be "I'm sorry, but I really hate this product" or "The product sucks, but I want to hurt YOU." A two star is generally more informative and likely to come with thoughtful text. But I don't know how you can assess that with numbers alone. I used to say that data science requires an interdisciplinary approach, and with massive amounts of human textual feedback, you would do well to add a linguist and a psychologist to the team.

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Holly Jahangiri
Holly Jahangiri

Written by Holly Jahangiri

Writer and Kid-at-Heart, often found at https://jahangiri.us. Subscribe to my (free!) Newsletter: https://hollyjahangiri.substack.com

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