Introducing Weighted Average

rAvg (formerly "review average") is now Avg (weighted average). Before it was simply the raw average (the sum of all reviews divided by the number of reviews) and subject to abuse, however, by using a weighted average we strengthen our quality assurance by significantly reducing attempts to stuff the ratings.

So what's Avg?
A weighted average is "an average that takes into account the proportional relevance of each component, rather than treating each component equally." We don't disclose the exact methods used to calculate the Avg, however, we can say that each user's rating history is now included as part of the new scheme and we'll make adjustments as needed to maintain the scheme's integrity.

All beer and brewery stats have been updated.

You spoke. We listened. Hads (ticks) count.
We're happy to announce that Hads once again count. We have no intentions on disclosing how or when they count towards the Avg, but they're being applied to our liking; and hopefully yours.

Note: To maintain our goal of encouraging more reviews (≥ 150 characters), the BeerAdvocate Overall Score (BOS) and top list weighted ranks (WR) are still calculated using the number of Reviews vs. number of Hads.

And we plan on applying all of the above to Places in the very near future too.

For more information on our ratings: http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beeradvocate-ratings-explained.184726/

 

Updates:
The following supporting updates have also been made in an effort to provide more insight into the data.

• Changed the "Revs" (reviews) column in beer lists to "Hads" and the number of Hads are now being displayed.
• Displaying number of Hads next to number of Reviews on top beer lists for reference.
• Number of Hads now displayed under a brewery's beer average.
• Fixed calculation bug with pDev.
• pDev and rDev are now displayed for beers or places with 3 or more ratings.

 

Update: An Avg calculation bug was identified by members and brewers last night that impacted certain beers. @Mike has identified the bug, applied a fix, and the affected beers are currently being updated. The process should be complete within the next 30 mins.

BA mobile has also been updated.

 

Update: Fixed a related rDev bug on user Beer Hads and Places Visited pages.

 

Update: @Mike has updated our API and we just ran update scripts to apply a weighted average to places that also takes Visits (like Hads) into consideration.

 

Update: Fixed a related bug that was impacting the beer average for breweries with beers that had few reviews. All brewery beer averages have been updated.