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Kindly comments on Stupid Questions December 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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It seems like we suck at using scales "from one to ten". Video game reviews nearly always give a 7-10 rating. Competitions with scores from judges seem to always give numbers between eight and ten, unless you crash or fall, and get a five or six. If I tell someone my mood is a 5/10, they seem to think I'm having a bad day. That is, we seem to compress things into the last few numbers of the scale. Does anybody know why this happens? Possible explanations that come to mind include:
People are scoring with reference to the high end, where "nothing is wrong", and they do not want to label things as more than two or three points worse than perfect
People are thinking in terms of grades, where 75% is a C. People think most things are not worse than a C grade (or maybe this is just another example of the pattern I'm seeing)
I'm succumbing to confirmation bias and this isn't a real pattern
Math competitions often have the opposite problem. The Putnam competition, for example, often has a median score of 0 or 1 out of 120.
I'm not sure this is a good thing. Participating in a math competition and getting 0 points is pretty discouraging, in a field where self-esteem is already an issue.
Interestingly enough, the scores on individual questions are extremely bimodal. They're theoretically out of 10 but the numbers between 3 and 7 are never used.