JJLehto said:
Noob question I know, what exactly is Mitch Hawker? I know it, seen it, but have no idea how it works...though a few have said they think it's more accurate/better than the Golden Tickets.
I've done floating turds that have more accuracy than the golden tickets - an event sponsored by the people who win the golden tickets - odd that...
Mitch Hawker's poll is an opportunity for everyone not to vote, but to allow an analysis of everyone's coasters and compare them.
I don't know the exact algorithm, but essentially if there was three of us in the poll and w ordered the three coasters we've been on as follows:
Me : 1. Skyrush, 2. I305, 3. Millennium Force
You: 1. Millennium Force, 2. Skyrush, 3. I305
Bob: 1. Leviathan, 2. Skyrush, 3. Millennium Force
What the poll does isn't just say "It's a tie with three 1st places". Or "1st place is worth 10 points, 2nd 8 and 3rd 5" (which would mean you're not getting a true reflection for rides that aren't well ridden, Millennium force and Skyrush with 3 votes compared to LEviathan with just one as fewer people have ridden Leviathan).
What it does is a comparative vote depending on what you've ridden and what order you've put them into.
So Skyrush was voted higher than Millennium Force twice and once lower - so it gets a score of +1 against Millennium Force -1.
Skyrush is higher than I305 twice and never lower, so Skyrush is +2 and I305 -2
Skyrush is once lower than Leviathan, so it's -1 and +1 to Leviathan.
And so on and so on for every single ride everyone has ever ridden. It's incredibly complex, but it means that it doesn't matter how many people have been on a ride, but how many people like that ride compared to the others they've been on. You find that the larger a person's count, the more well rounded the position of a ride.
The poll is open to everybody, not just people who are paid for by the parks/manufacturers and it's worldwide, whereas the golden tickets are US based.
It's not 100% accurate and it is open to a degree of abuse if people have been on an obscure coaster that they rank above all others (above, Leviathan ends up joint winner with Skyrush, even though only one person has been on the ride - it's like that only larger scale). However, it doesn't happen often.
Hope that helps anyway. It's always a good indicator of how good rides are - as long as you use it as a guideline rather than an absolute.
