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by Michael Toppa | |
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A total of 134 people participated in at least one part of the poll. The following analyses of the poll data are provided below:
Album Rankings |
Album Rankings | ![]() |
Studio Albums |
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Participants were asked to rank the 8 studio albums (including Wonderland) in order of preference, by ranking their favorite album as "1", their second favorite as "2," etc. 98 of the 122 who ranked the albums provided a ranking for every album. The other 24 ranked only some of the albums, presumably because they are not familiar with all of them. On the one hand, including the votes of these 24 would arguable "shortchange" the albums they didn't rank (in their comparisons with the other albums) as the albums would have scores of "0". On the other hand, it seems unfair to ignore someone's opinion simply because he or she hasn't bought every Big Country album. So, I present you with two analyses. One which includes all 122 participants, and one which includes only the 98 who ranked every album. The results are fairly similar in both, with only "Wonderland" and "Buffalo Skinners" having different rankings in the two analyses. The following scores were generated using a weighted scale. When someone ranked an album as "1," it earned 8 points, a ranking of "2" earned 7 points, etc. The total score for each album was then divided by the number of people who provided votes for that album. This makes no difference in the analysis of those who ranked every album, but in the other analysis this helps to compensate for the "0" votes. A third analysis, which consists of a line graph of the raw vote count, will be available on my web site soon (the raw count provides the same rankings as the 2nd table below). | ||
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Album Rankings | ![]() |
Live Albums |
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The live albums were scored with roughly the same methodology as the studio album analyses. However, since there are four live albums, a ranking of "1" earns a score of 4, a ranking of "2" earns a score of 3, etc. 107 people ranked at least some of the live albums, and 86 of those ranked all of them. The web site will contain a line-graph of the raw vote ("Eclectic" and "BBC Live" switch places in the raw count, arguably because many did not offer any ranking of "BBC Live," thus lowering its position). |
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Song Rankings | ![]() |
Best Song |
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Participants were asked to list their 10 favorite Big Country songs, in order, starting with their most favorite. Below are three different analyses of the data:
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Song Rankings | ![]() |
Best Song: Simple Tabulation |
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The following is a simple compilation of everyone's choices for the "number one" song on his or her top 10 list. |
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Song Rankings | ![]() |
Best Song: Top 10 Analysis, Version 1 |
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In this analysis, a song ranked as "number one" on someone's top 10 list is worth 10x as much the song he or she ranked as tenth (with the rankings in-between being scored at regular intervals between these two extremes). This means a song can do well with a modest number of high rankings, but would probably do poorly even if it had a lot of low rankings. |
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Song Rankings | ![]() |
Best Song: Top 10 Analysis, Version 2 |
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In contrast to the above analysis, a song ranked as "number one" on someone's list in this analysis is worth only 2x as much the song he or she ranked as tenth (with the rankings in-between being scored at regular intervals between these two extremes). This means a song can do fairly well with a large number of low rankings, even if it has relatively few high rankings. Nonetheless, with a few interesting variations, the results are quite similar to the above analysis. |
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Song Rankings | ![]() |
Worst Song |
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Below is a compilation of the votes for the coveted category of "worst Big Country song ever created and commercially released" (note that covers do not qualify for this category). |
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