Explanation of how the Eternal Poll works

The aim of the poll at Casper's Queen Site is to have an ongoing comparison, changing over time between all items in the Queen/Solo catalogue. The current catalogue under vote is that of all albums (compilations excluded). This comparison is archieved via pairwise comparisons of random items. Eventually, when enough people have voted, the statistical fluctuation of the average rankings will decrease enough to get a reasonable ranking of items. It could be, of course, that the ranking of items change substantly over time. (Songs with some nice 'summery' up-tempo beat might be relatively better ranked by visitors in sunny months, etc.)

Voting is done based on various statistical principles. For each vote, two items are randomly selected. Items with relatively low vote-count have a slightly higher probability of being selected, in order to have the number of votes per item approximately equal, and hence, all average ratings approximately equally accurate. Furthermore, two items with ratings close to one another have a larger probability to be selected together than two items with ratings further away. This is because a vote between these two items is more informative. To prevent misuse, each visitor can only vote 10 times a day.

Scoring is done based on various statistical principles, loosely based on other (e.g. chess and football) ranking systems. Instead of just getting a '+1' for a win, and a '-1' for a loss, the number of points won/lost depends on the ratings of the two items in the comparison: when a high ranking item wins from a lower ranking item, the gain for the winner is not as much as when the lower ranking item would have won. Without going into technicalities, a win gains somewhere between 0 and 200 points, with 100 points being won when winning from an 'equally well ranked' competitor; a loss loses also between 0 and 200 points, with, again, 100 points being lost when losing from an 'equally well ranked' competitor.

If you are interested in more details, please let me know by leaving a message in the guestbook.