Science of decision making - Movie Review Edition

Vencut Sobbo, BTech, MBA, Senior Vice President–Strategy, was busy making a presentation on “Strategic Initiatives for Sustainable Growth by Leveraging Synergies”, when he got a call from his wife that she would like to go for a movie.

Hard pressed for time, he called up his Secy and asked about hindi movies currently playing.  Cecillia replied, “Dil to Baccha hai Ji, Yamla Pagla Deewana, Dhobhi Ghat, No One Killed Jessica & Tees Maar Khan ”.

His AVP, Suniel GoSwami, MBA from IIIICM, overheard this and decided to do a quick research on the reviews and ratings,  and knowing that Mrs. Sobbo was an Aamir Khan fan , he "zeroed in" on Dhobhi Ghat.

Suniel, like most of you , relied on the medieval “Star Rating” system to choose which movie to watch but decided to “Walk an extra mile” to impress his boss .

He pulled out 21 reviews of Dhobhi Ghat , meticulously put them in a PowerPoint.

These were the results :

« One Star – (1) Komal Nahta

«« Two Star – (3) Minty Tezpal ( Mumbai Mirror) , Gaurav Malani ( Economic Times) & Blessy Chettiar ( DNA)

««^1/2 Two and a Half star – (4) Khalid Mohammed & Kaveree Bamzai( India Today) etc

««« Three Star – (5) Anupama Chopra ( NDTV) , Rajeev Masand ( IBN) , Sonil Dedhia ( Rediff) etc

«««^1/2 Three and Half Star- ( 5) Nikhat Kazmi ( Times) , Sonia Chopra ( Sify) , Sarita Tawar ( Mid-Day) etc

«««« Four Star – (3) Taran Adarsh , Santa Banta and Now Running.

Little confused but knowing his Boss’s fetish for numbers and stats , he didn’t settle for this raw data and “drilled down” further . So all 21 results were “populated” in “Microsoft Access” and he “Run a query” to find a little more scientific and statistically correct rating , results were :

Average	2.928571
Mode	3
Median	3
Geometric Mean	2.805119
Harmonic Mean	2.643093

As any statistical result would have , he also added a disclaimer : "It's assumed that all 21 reviewers are equally talented ( hence no need of weighted mean), and none of them has been influenced by any kith, kin cast or crew of any of these movies. Also, it's assumed that they have rated these movies after watching at least 10 minutes each of both halves"

Satisfied that he had done enough, he called his boss to tell the results. Vencut , entered the cabin humming “Sheila ki Jawani”, looked at the PowerPoint titled “Informed Decision Making” .  Inspite of being a “Man of numbers”, he was not looking visibly impressed with this 6 slide power point presentation with graphs and pie charts. He called Cecilia to check who’s the heroine in Dhobhi Ghat , Cecilia said “Some new unglamorous chic, I don’t know the name, sir”.

Vencut immediately called his wife “Honey , tried tickets of Dhobhi Ghat , but couldn’t get , so got you Tees Maar Khan – It’s an Akshay Starrer, and a comedy which you’ll like”. 

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