From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc,alt.rock-n-roll
Subject: UAP #17 - Marillion/Fish (Repost)
Keywords: Usenet Artists Polls
Date: 8 Apr 92 21:08:59 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Enea Data AB

(Either people have grown completely tried of these polls, or
the first article went up in smoke, not a single response this 
far.)

The seventeenth Usenet Artist Poll covers Marillion and Fish.
I see no reason to exclude Fish's albums, au contraire I want
to catch the opinion on their respective works after the split.

I am aware of that availability of Fish's solo albums in the
US is not the best. "Internal Exile" was reported to be released
in the US on May 7th. Giving people some time to learn to know 
it would mean that I would have to defer the poll until autumn,
since many Marillion/Fish fans are students. And I want to know
now! So here it goes.

As usual there is a list of albums is below, I appreciate very
much if you use this list as a template for your ballot.

Deadline for this poll is April 25th. (A period on three weeks
due to Easter.)

NOTE: If you have not participated in these polls before, please be
careful to read the voting instructions after the ballot template.

At the very end of this posting there is a description the algorithm
I use for the polls.

Here are all original Marillion/Fish albums. As always, bootlegs are 
*not* included.

&BEGIN
Script For a Jester's Tear
Fugazi
Real to Reel
Misplaced Childhood
Brief Encounter
Clutching at Straws
The Thieving Magpie
B'sides Themselves
Season's End
Holiday in Eden
Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
Internal Exile
&END

How to vote: use the list above as a template for your ballot.
Sort the list so that your favourite comes right after the
&BEGIN and your least favourite just before the &END. Delete
albums you are not familliar with. One album by line. No numbering.
Please delete quote characters like ">" from your ballot.

If you can't tell two or more albums apart you can declare a
tie. You do this by preceding the albums with &TIE. The tie
lasts until the next &END. The number of &END on the ballot
must be equal to the number of &TIE + one for the &BEGIN.

If you feel that there is a big gap between two albums you
can mark this with a filler. A filler has the format &FILLERn
where n is a positive number, default is 1. Notice that a too
big value of n make little sense; the net effect is the same
declaring an &TIE on the albums separated by the &FILLER.

There is an example ballot at the end of posting where I have
indicated the effect of the fillers and ties, followed by a
detailed explanation.

To participate you need to know at least two albums, so you don't
have to be shy. Ballots are weighted, so the more you albums you
know, the more influence do your ballot get.

*MAIL* your vote ballot to me, sommar@enea.se. Idiots who post
will be flamed to crisps. If your mailer leave a decent return
address you will get the results in your mailbox. If you want
the results to another address, please state so, but no guarantees.

I generally don't acknowledge ballots, but I do so if you ask me to.

It's OK to send in a vote for a friend who does not have net access.
Just indicate that the vote is for someone else so I know that
it's not a duplicate.

Have fun!

Ballot example for an imagninary group. The numbers in the far right
is the actual number of points the ballot generates before weighing.
Please observe that they are *not* part of the ballot, and thus you
should not add any numbers of your ballot.

&BEGIN
She Comes in the Morning                      0.5
Next Day                                      0.4
&TIE
Looks Like Trouble                            0.25
Futuralized                                   0.25
&END
On the Way Down                               0.1
Cram it!                                      0.0
&FILLER4
Last Really Crappy Album                     -0.500
&END

Now, how do these polls really work? The example above gives some
hints, but this is the full story.

Step 1:
The intervall from -0.5 to 0.5 is sliced up at (N + F + 1) equi-
distant points, where N = number of entries, and F = number of
fillers. In the example ballot N = 6 and F = 4. The top album gets
0.5 points, next album ( (N + F) / (N + F + 1) ) - 0.5 points,
third best gets ( (N + F - 1) / (N + F + 1) ) - 0.5 points etc,
down the last which gets -0.5 points. If two or more albums are tied,
they get the average of the involved points. (Side note: if we forget
the fillers, the method corresponds to the one you use for pairs
competitions in bridge.)

Step 2:
In order to avoid distortion from voters who only know the 2-3
most popular albums, the ballots are weighed so that the points
from step 1 are multiplied with sqrt(N).

Step 3:
All ballots are added together and for each album the final number
of points is P = (p1 + p2 ... pM) * 1000 / M, where M = the number
of ballots the album appears on. Thus, the result for an album is
indepentent on how well-known it is, although albums listed less
than three times are excluded from the final result.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se