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Tag: Polls

Reader Poll Roundup: Series Ten Edition

Every year when I examine the readers’ reactions to the series’s episodes, I have more data from previous years (S7, S8, S9) to compare and contrast, thus giving context to the current year’s ratings. Because I eliminated the zero-star option in all of the Reader Polls this year, I won’t be able to do an “apples to apples” analysis, but will do what I can with what I’ve got.

I’ll begin, as usual, with the average (mean) ratings. For each episode, I multiplied any given star rating (e.g., 5 stars) by the number of votes it got, added the results, and divided that sum by the total number of votes. The relatively even-keeled results are below:

Although the separation between best and worst scores are not as extreme, this year there’s a slightly wider spread in the middle half of the data than last year. The six middle-ranking episodes span a bit more than half a star (0.58), as opposed to S9’s three-tenths of a star. S7’s middle seven episodes were separated by 0.46 stars; S8’s middle half by 0.44. For ease of visualization, here are the S10 ratings from best to worst (note that different colors have been assigned to the episodes between the above and below charts; I couldn’t help that):

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Reader Poll Roundup: Series Nine Edition

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When I drew my comparisons last year between Series Seven and Series Eight, I had to do a little handwaving because of the difference in the lengths of those series (thirteen and twelve episodes, respectively). For similar reasons, the switch between Doctors was difficult to quantify. This time I can draw more direct parallels as both the number of episodes and the current Doctor are the same between S8 and S9; S7 will also get a look-in.

Beginning with the average (mean) ratings of episodes, we see the usual ups and downs over the course of the series. To get the average rating for any given episode, each star rating (e.g., 5 stars) was multiplied by the number of votes it got, the results added, and the sum divided by the total number of votes. For Series Nine, we get the following:

Although there are some peaks and valleys (more on that later), we see that the ratings were fairly consistent throughout the series. Fully half of them fall within less than a third of a star of each other (from 3.45 to 3.75 stars).

If we rearrange the data to show how the episodes scored from highest to lowest, we can see the trend more clearly (note that the episodes are different colors between the above and below charts; apologies for the vagaries of my visualization software):

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Reader Poll Roundup: Series Eight Edition

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I have been fascinated with the results of this year’s reader polls, especially as I compare them to last year’s. My data sets aren’t completely parallel, since Series Seven had thirteen episodes with a Christmas Special in the middle (for a total of fourteen) while Series Eight only had twelve, but I think the comparisons are interesting nevertheless.

As last year, I’m going to start with the average (mean) ratings of episodes in chronological order. For any given episode, each star rating (e.g., 5 stars) was multiplied by the number of votes it got, the results added, and the sum divided by the total number of votes. Here’s how the ratings looked for Series Eight:

Honestly, I was surprised by how low some of these scores were, as the series was my favorite of Moffat’s tenure. Clearly, YMMV. What I find stands out though, is the sharp difference from episode to episode, especially the ratings plummet between episodes nine and ten.For a different visualization of the same data, here’s how they ranked from highest to lowest scores (and I apologize that the episodes are different colors between these two charts):

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Reader Poll Roundup

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You may have noticed that every week there was brand new Who, I posted a reader poll inviting visitors to the blog to rate the latest episode. It’s been fascinating to see the results, watching the overall trend toward high or low score – often away from my personal rating – and the distribution of votes. I had so much fun playing with the data, as a matter of fact, that I decided to share some of my findings publicly. (You can always go back to the poll archives to check my work yourself, if you feel so inclined.)

To start, I’m going to present the chronological list of ratings for all the Series 7 stories (7A, 7B, and the Christmas Special). These are the average (mean) ratings over all votes received. In other words, I took each star rating and multiplied by the number of votes the rating got, then added all those results and divided by total number of votes. This is how it panned out:

As you can see, the season overall was very uneven. I find it interesting that Series 7A yielded an inverse bell curve, with A Town Called Mercy being the nadir according to the sampled voters. In 7B, there were several dips, but the low point of the entire series – again, according to the votes received – was The Rings of Akhaten.

For those of you already trying to figure out how they all stack up against each other, try this on for size:

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