consensus: great movies - results - Page 2

Jack Briggs · 03-22-2002, 12:39 PM

Quote:

"First of all, I spelled consensus incorrectly in the title, but, then again, no one noticed."

Well, it was the first thing I noticed. See the title now.

Anyway, interesting results and impressive results here.

Gabe D · 03-22-2002, 07:09 PM

Quote:

....gave the fewest thumbs up, Gabe D the most.

Indeed I was liberal with the term "great." The last thing I did before pressing "Submit Reply" was reconsider any thumbs downs. Out of 220 movies, I bet I probably deleted about 30 thumbs downs at the last second.

Still, I won't deny that I love a lot of movies. (That's what made the "list your 100 favorite movies" topic so difficult. I had to cut a couple hundred of my favorite movies! Ouch!)

Nick Sievers · 03-22-2002, 07:43 PM

Well done George, you have put a lot of effort into this and i'm glad I participated. Looking forward to more stats now

.

Dome Vongvises · 03-23-2002, 02:18 AM

Quote:

Dome gave the least number of thumbs down

Really? Wow.....
Goes to show I've got miles to go before I obtain highly discriminating tastes. My love for movies is a lot like my love of food. Of course, I fail to make the connection between loving movies and being 30 pounds overweight.

george kaplan · 03-23-2002, 08:45 AM

OK, the final index is called the predicted consensus index. The idea is this. We're all in a room and we raise our hands if we think a movie is great. Some who don't raise their hands think the film isn't great, but others haven't seen it. Now, we screen the film for everyone and have a new vote. Now since everyone has seen it, there won't be any abstains. The predicted consensus attempts to use our data to estimate or predict what would happen if there were no abstentions. I won't bore you with the statistical details, but it has to do with taking the lower bound of a conservative(p-hat=.5) version of a 95% confidence interval, and then adding an appropriate constant. Don't worry if that doesn't make sense. Just enjoy the results. The following all would be predicted to have 90% or more consensus:

RANK..FILM.........................PREDICTED
1...Rear Window.......................100
2...Psycho............................100
3...Citizen Kane......................100
4...Notorious..........................97
5...The Godfather......................97
5...The Godfather, Part 2..............97
7...Das Boot...........................97
8...Dr. Strangelove....................96
9...12 Angry Men.......................96
10..Vertigo............................96
10..Bridge on the River Kwai...........96
12..To Kill a Mockingbird..............95
13..Star Wars..........................95
14..M..................................95
15..Rebecca............................94
15..The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.....94
17..North by Northwest.................94
18..The Third Man......................93
19..Double Indemnity...................93
20..Goodfellas.........................93
21..Chinatown..........................93
22..Ben-Hur (1959).....................93
23..Touch of Evil......................92
24..The Wizard of Oz...................91
25..Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.......90
26..Apocalypse Now.....................90
27..Casablanca.........................90
28..The Gold Rush (1925)...............90
28..The Lady Vanishes..................90

Note that a number of films have moved around. Although NxNW has a higher consensus than Vertigo, Vertigo has a higher predicted consensus than NxNW.

Some other big changes:

PREDICTED RANK...CONSENSUS RANK...FILM
......4...............29........Notorious
......7...............38........Das Boot
......9...............43........12 Angry Men
.....14...............60........M
.....15...............29........Rebecca
.....15...............29........The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
.....18...............35........The Third Man
.....19...............83........Double Indemnity
.....23...............43........Touch of Evil
.....24...............10........The Wizard of Oz
.....25...............58........Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
.....26...............12........Apocalypse Now
.....27...............13........Casablanca
.....31................9........2001: A Space Odyssey
.....37...............52........The Apartment
.....42...............21........Schindler's List
.....42...............22........Lawrence of Arabia
.....44...............25........Patton
.....48...............17........One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
.....48...............17........Raiders of the Lost Ark
.....48...............17........Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs
.....76...............25........Jaws

Which is better the consensus index or the predicted consensus index? You'll have to make that call, although I must say there's something appealing about an index that puts the Apartment ahead of Lawrence of Arabia, right Rob?

Finally, the bottom of the predicted consensus (all predicted to be less than 30%):

RANK..FILM................................PREDICTED
207...The Return of the Jedi.................29
207...Forrest Gump...........................29
209...American History X.....................28
210...Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory....27
210...Who Framed Roger Rabbit?...............27
212...Lonesome Dove..........................26
213...Pillow Talk............................26
214...Logan's Run............................24
215...Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade.......23
216...Victor/Victoria........................18
217...Predator...............................15
218...What's Up Doc?.........................11
219...The Killer.............................11
220...Wag the Dog.............................2

SteveGon · 03-23-2002, 08:53 AM

Interesting results. I think I prefer the predicted rank as ol' Harry Lime fared better therein.

Kudos to ya, George, for all the time and effort you put into it!

David Dennison · 03-23-2002, 07:40 PM

Great work George! I've really enjoyed reading all the results.

george kaplan · 03-23-2002, 09:56 PM

Here are some results based on age.

Essentially, the primary difference in age seems to that younger voters are more likely to have considered as great newer movies, and older voters have a higher opinion of older movies.

Now, be careful with this, because a lot of young voters gave thumbs up to a lot of older movies and vice versa.

However, if you take the average age of the voters that gave a movie thumbs up, the following movies are the only one with an average age less than 25:

Wag the Dog (1997)
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
The Return of the Jedi (1983)
Predator (1987)
Se7en (1995)
Ferris Beuller's Day Off (1986)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Fight Club (1999)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Back To the Future (1985)

The following were the only ones with an average age over 32:

From Russia With Love (1963)
Lost Horizon (1937)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Modern Times (1936)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Frankenstein (1931)
Stalag 17 (1953)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
To Have & Have Not (1944)
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
The Bank Dick (1940)
The Court Jester (1956)
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Sons of the Desert (1933)
Top Hat (1935)

Of course, these are just averages. 2 of these films were given thumbs up by a 16 year old. Only Top Hat had no thumbs up from anyone under 35. And five of the 10 youngest averages had votes from 39 year olds. Only Wag the Dog had no thumbs up from anyone older than 18.

So, it's a general trend, but with lots of variability. Lots of films, old and new, had thumbs up from voters the whole gamut of ages (in this sample), from 16 to 43. As a matter of fact, there were 90 such movies, from M (1931) to Fellowship of the Ring (2002).

Jeff_A · 03-24-2002, 07:45 AM

When this thread has run its course, I wonder if we could request that it be archived? There is quite a bit of data here that we may refer back to and I would hate to see it ever disappear.

george kaplan · 03-24-2002, 10:01 AM

Another age factor is, not surprisingly, the abstention rate. This isn't a knock on younger voters, they haven't had as much opportunity to see as many movies, it'd be surprising if it wasn't like this.

Average number of abstentions for all voters: 67 (out of 220)

Avg. abstains for those under 20: 105
Avg. abstains for those 39 and up: 24

As a matter of fact the person 39 and up with the most abstains still had fewer than the person under 20 with the least.

Breaking up age into two groups, we get the following avg. abstains:

16-29: 80
30-43: 54

rhett · 03-24-2002, 12:44 PM

Quote:

As a matter of fact the person 39 and up with the most abstains still had fewer than the person under 20 with the least.

Wow, that's an interesting stat, I never would have thought it would be that bad!